I mean, how did we know he was dead? All I knew was what Pepper told me. All Pepper knew was what someone told him. And what had that been? That Solano was found drowned in the same spot where the girl supposedly drowned fifty years before? Well, the first glaring problem with this was the fact nobody would have known where Solano found the girl’s body except Solano himself—if there had ever been a girl to begin with. Moreover, Pepper had said the police hadn’t been able to determine Solano’s cause of death because he had been in the water, undiscovered, for too long, eaten by salamanders and fish. Well, if he was this badly gone, perhaps little more than a clothed skeleton, it went to reason they couldn’t positively identify him either.

So the body might not have been his. It could have belonged to anyone.

But who?

Someone like Miguel who had trespassed on his island?

Holy shit! Was Solano the killer then? And if so, he surely knew of our presence on his island. Of course he knew. We were camping out in his fucking house!

I turned to Pita, to share this discovery.

Her eyes were closed, her lips parted slightly. She was asleep.

I stared ahead again, into the night, the rain.

Was Solano out there somewhere? Watching us? Plotting?

4

I was dozing off, my chin touching my chest, when a sound caused me to start. I jerked my head up, snapped open my eyes. But it was only Jesus and Nitro, coming outside to relieve us.

It was 2 a.m.

5

Inside the cabin the candles burned warmly, beacons in the tempest, though two had extinguished themselves. Elizaveta sat at the table by herself. She smiled diffidently at us. “You survived,” she said.

“It’s crazy out there,” I said.

“I know, Jack. I can hear. The thunder, it’s like earthquake.”

I checked in on Lucinda. She lay on her back, the red sheet pulled to her chin. Her attractive face was hoary, sunken, almost cadaverous. I peeled back the sheet, then Solano’s poncho, which made me think of Clint Eastwood in his Spaghetti Westerns. Trying not to look at Lucinda’s bare breasts, I eased her onto her side. Her skin was hot and clammy. Nitro’s tank top/compress was stiff with blood. However, it seemed to have worked, as the laceration had ceased bleeding. I eased Lucinda onto her back and once more covered her with the poncho and sheet. The pulse in her neck was difficult to palpate, but it was there, faint and slow. Her breathing sounded raspy.

“Lucinda?” I said softly, not expecting an answer.

I didn’t get one.