Shafer had played. The murder case had obsessed me for over a year, and that was enough.
Christine had asked me to give it up, Nana had asked, too, and I hadn't listened. Maybe I hadn't been able to see my life and actions as clearly as I did now. I was the Dragonslayer, and all that it meant, the good and the bad. In the end, I held myself responsible for Christine's kidnapping and murder.
Sampson and I tramped past the colorful concession stands without any real interest, barely a passing nod. Street hawkers, called higglers, were selling wooden jewelry and other carvings, but also Jamaican coffee and cocoa.
Each of us carried a black duffel bag. We didn't exactly look like vacationers, I was thinking. We still looked like policemen.
I heard a voice calling loudly from behind, and I turned back to look at the commotion coming up from the rear.
It was the Jamaican detective, John Anthony, calling out my name in the noisy terminal, coming our way in a big hurry. He was walking rapidly, a few steps ahead of Andrew Jones, who looked powerfully dismayed.
Jones and Anthony at the airport? What in God's name was happening now? What could possibly have gone wrong?
'The Weasel?' I said, and it came out like a curse.
Sampson and I stopped, and they finally caught up with us. I almost didn't want to hear what they had to tell us.
'You have to go back with us, Alex. Come with me.' Jones said, slightly out of breath. 'It's about Christine Johnson. Something's turned up. Come.'
'What is it? What's happened?' I asked Jones, then Detective Anthony, when the Englishman was slow in answering.
Anthony hesitated, but then he said, 'We don't know for sure. It could be nothing at all. Someone claims to have seen her, though. She may be here in Jamaica, after all. Come with us.'
I couldn't believe what he had just told me. I felt Sampson's arm wrap tightly around me, but everything else seemed unreal, as in a dream.
It wasn't over yet.
?CHAPTER One Hundred and Twenty-One
On the road out of the airport, Andrew Jones and Detective Anthony filled us in on what they knew. I could tell that they were trying not to build up my hopes too much. I'd been in the same untenable situation many times, but not as a victim of a crime.
'Last night we caught a small-time local thief breaking into a house in Ocho Rios.' Anthony said as he drove, the four of us packed tightly in his Toyota. 'He said he had information to trade. We told him we would hear what he had to say, and then we would decide. He then revealed that an American woman had been kept in the hills east of Ocho Rios, near the town of Euarton. There's an outlaw group lives up there sometimes.
'I learned about it only this morning. I called Andrew and we hurried to the airport. The man says she was called Beatitude. No other name was used. I contacted your hotel, but you had already left for the airport. So we came out here to get you.'
'Thank you.' I finally said, realizing I had probably been told as much as they knew.
Sampson spoke up. 'So why does this helpful thief appear now, after all this time?'
'He said there was a shooting a few nights ago that changed everything. Once the white men died, the woman wasn't important anymore. Those were his words.'
'You know these men?' I asked Detective Anthony.
'Men, women, children. Yes, I've dealt with them before. They smoke a lot of ganja. Practice their hybrid religion, worship the Emperor Haile Selassie, I know. A few of them are small-time thieves. Mostly, we let them be.'
Everyone in the car grew quiet as we hurried along the coast road toward Runaway Bay and Ocho Rios. The storm had passed quickly, and suddenly the island's hellified sun was blazing again. Sugarcane workers with machetes on their hips were tramping back into the fields.
Past the village of Runaway Bay, Detective Anthony turned off the main road and headed up into the hills on Route Al. The trees and bushes here were a thick jungle. The road eventually became a tunnel boring through vines and branches. Anthony had to turn on the headlights.
I felt as if I were drifting through a mist, watching everything as if in a dream. I understood that I was trying to protect myself, but also that it wasn't working.
Who was Beatitude? I couldn't make myself believe that Christine was alive, but at least there was a chance, and I clung to that. I had given up weeks before. Now I allowed myself to remember how much I loved her, how I missed her. Suddenly, I choked hard, and I turned my face toward the window. I went deep inside myself.
Bright light shone in my eyes. The car exited the brush after two or three miles that had seemed much longer on the twisting road. We were entering lush hills that looked something like the American South back in the fifties and sixties - maybe like Georgia or Alabama. Children in dated clothes played in front of small run-down houses. Their elders sat on uneven, slanted porches and watched the occasional car drive past.
Everything looked and felt so incredibly unreal to me. I couldn't focus.
We turned onto a skinny dirt road with a thick, high corridor of grass running between deep tire ruts. This had to be the place. My heart was pumping loudly, and it sounded like a tin drum being pounded in a tunnel. I felt every bump in the road like a hard punch.
Beatitude? Who was the woman they were holding? Could it possibly be Christine?
Sampson checked the load in his Glock. I heard the mechanism slide and click, and I glanced his way.
