“Holy shit,” Josh whispered as his truck, following Rob Silver’s Explorer, emerged from the rain forest into the vast garden that was Takeo Yoshihara’s estate. “Will you look at this? What do you think it cost?”
Even though his mother had described the estate to him, Michael was no more prepared for the reality of it than Josh. As his eyes darted from a pond to a waterfall to a Zen garden, he found himself unable to really look at anything. “Ten million?” he guessed.
“A lot more’n that,” Josh said. “Look at those buildings. That’s all koa wood, man. Stuff costs a fortune.” He slowed the truck to a crawl, staring first in one direction, then in another. Suddenly an albino peacock appeared from a grove of trees, stopped short, and spread its enormous tail into a huge white fan. “I don’t believe this, man,” Josh breathed. “How many people do you suppose it takes to take care of it?”
Michael grinned. “Maybe we can get summer jobs as gardeners.”
“Right,” Josh groaned. “Except I hear you practically have to be a landscape architect just to mow the lawns in here.”
A minute later they were through the estate and onto the bumpy track that led out to the site two miles farther on.
Stephen Jameson stared, unseeing, out the window of his office in the long, low-slung building that stood on the far side of the gardens from his employer’s private residence. Though his eyes had unconsciously followed the progress of the Explorer and the ancient pickup that followed it as they wound through the gardens, a minute after they passed he wouldn’t have even been able to say for certain what color either vehicle had been, so focused was his mind on the problem at hand.
On his desk lay the copy of the autopsy report. Next to it stood the jar containing the specimen of Kioki Santoya’s lung that the orderly had carved out of the corpse. For a moment Jameson considered arranging to have the corpse transferred from the hospital morgue to the estate, but then realized that would only serve to draw more attention to the body than was already being paid. Besides, what would be the point? Jameson was already certain he knew the exact cause of the boy’s death. He had already had a cursory look at the tissue sample through the microscope in his office. The full lab analysis that would be performed on the sample would, he was sure, only confirm his preliminary findings.
The question was, how had Kioki become exposed? And, just as important, had the three boys mentioned in the memo accompanying the autopsy report also been exposed?
Stephen Jameson picked up the phone on his desk, dialed a four-digit number, and began speaking the moment the phone at the other end was answered.
“Dr. Jameson here. I have three names: Jeff Kina, Josh Malani, and Rick Pieper. All three of them sixteen or seventeen years old. All three are to be kept under surveillance. If anything should happen to any of them — if they should get sick — bring them here. Is that clear?”
The man at the other end read back the three names. Stephen Jameson was about to hang up when another thought occurred to him. “There’s one more name,” he added. “Elvis Dinkins. He just left the estate a few minutes ago. It would be best if he didn’t make it back to Wailuku.”
By the time they’d gone only a quarter of a mile from the main part of Takeo Yoshihara’s estate, Josh Malani had skidded off the rutted road twice, and the second time Rob Silver had to tow Josh’s truck back onto the track.
“Maybe we’d better leave your truck here and go the rest of the way in the Explorer,” he suggested as he unfastened the tow rope from Josh’s front bumper.
“I can make it,” Josh insisted. “I’ve been on lots worse roads than this one.”
The look in Josh’s eye told Rob that argument would be useless, so he tossed the rope into the back of his Explorer and continued along the road, glancing in his rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure Josh’s rusty pickup was still behind him.
Miraculously, Josh managed to keep on the track the rest of the way, finally lurching to a stop in the clearing where the canopies had been set up to shelter the worktables. Josh gazed around, his disappointment at finding nothing more interesting than some worn rocks clear on his face. “This isn’t actually the site,” Katharine told the boys, coming out of the shelter of one of the canopies. “It’s up that way. Come on.”
As she led them along the steep trail into the ravine, Michael once again felt the strange sensation in his chest.
Not a pain, really.
Just a funny feeling, as if he were about to run out of breath, even though he was breathing just fine right now.
Weird.
Steeling himself against the odd phenomenon, he continued along the trail until at last they came to the ledge on which the fire pit and the skeleton lay.
“Jeez,” Josh whispered as he gazed down at the remains that still lay in exactly the position in which Katharine had uncovered them. “What is it? A chimpanzee?”
“Not a chimpanzee, and not a gorilla,” Katharine told him. She knelt down and began explaining the features of the skeleton, but Michael was no longer listening, for the moment he’d seen the skeleton, a feeling even stranger than the one in his chest had come over him.
A feeling that ran over his spine like fingers of ice.
A feeling almost like fear, but not quite.
He stood staring down at the skeleton, transfixed, then slowly forced himself to look away.
He glanced around.
Maybe it was just that it reminded him of someplace else — someplace he and his mother had been to years ago, some other dig, somewhere in Africa.
But most of the places they’d been in Africa hadn’t been anything like this. They’d been in dry, desert areas, places where rain was so scarce that practically nothing grew at all, while here they were surrounded by rain forest, with trees towering overhead, vines climbing up their trunks, ferns sprouting from the vertical faces of the ravine, mosses everywhere.
Nothing like the part of Africa he’d been to — or anyplace else he could remember, either.
His eyes returned to the skeleton. He stooped down, and reached out a hand, laying it on the steeply sloping forehead of the skull.
Why? he thought. Why did I do that?
“Careful,” he heard his mother say.
Jerking his hand away almost guiltily, he looked up at her. “What is it?” he asked.
Katharine’s brows furrowed and her lips twisted into a quizzical half smile. “Haven’t you been listening? I was just telling Josh that so far it doesn’t seem to quite fit with anything I’ve seen before.”
But Michael’s eyes remained on the skeleton. Again he felt the strange, cold shiver, the tightness in his chest. Involuntarily, he reached out, but before he could touch the skull again, his mother’s voice cut through his reverie.
“Michael? Honey, are you all right?”
Michael pulled his hand away from the skull and straightened up. How could he tell his mother what he was feeling? How could he tell anyone, since he barely understood it himself? Finally tearing his eyes away from the strange skull, he looked up into his mother’s face.
“What is it?” she asked again. “What’s wrong?”
Michael’s mind raced, but before he could reply, he heard Josh answering his mother’s question.
“One of our friends died last night.”
Katharine’s mouth dropped open. “One of your friends?” she echoed. Her eyes shifted from Josh to Michael. “You mean one of the boys you were out with last night?”
Michael nodded, “Kioki Santoya,” he said. “He was on the track team.”
Katharine sank down onto a large boulder. “How?” she asked. “What happened?”
Slowly, Michael and Josh told her the little they knew about Kioki’s death.
“And he just died?” Katharine asked as they finished. “In the middle of a cane field?”
As Michael and Josh nodded, Katharine instinctively stood and put her arms around her son. “How awful,” she said. “You must feel—”
“I’m okay, Mom,” Michael said, his face reddening with embarrassment as he pulled himself out of her
