“I could have told you that,” Pepper said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. There isn’t a radio tower for kilometers.”

“Rosa?” I called. “Do you think you can find the way back to your camp?”

“I don’t know.” She looked about helplessly. “I don’t think so.”

“How did you guys get to the island? Did you take one of those gondolas?”

“Trajineras,” Pita said.

“Trajineras,” I amended.

Rosa shook her head. “We took a canoe.”

“So if we found the canoe, do you think you could find your camp?”

She nodded. “Easy.”

2

Nitro and Elizaveta returned a few minutes later—Elizaveta had gone off to take some pictures with her small digital camera—and we gave them a quick rundown of everything Rosa told us. Like the rest of us, Elizaveta was visibly agitated by the possibility a murder had occurred on the island. Nitro’s reaction, however, was the exact opposite: he seemed pumped, like a Hardy Boy keen to tackle a new mystery. He even went so far as to scavenge a stick to defend us with.

We didn’t want to split up given a killer might be lurking about, but we didn’t have a choice. Jesus’s sprained ankle made him immobile. So in the end we decided to divide the group in half. Elizaveta and Pita would stay behind with Jesus, while Nitro, Pepper, and I (with Rosa guiding us) would set off along the bank to circumvent the perimeter of the island in search of the canoe.

Nitro and his stick took vanguard. Pepper and I came next with Rosa between us, holding our hands. We followed a strip of land that ran between the tree-line and the water. The ground was mostly hardpan and scrub, occasionally overrun with huge ferns and waist-high vegetation, but it was relatively easy-going. The dolls were strung up in greater concentration here, along the waterfront, than anywhere else on the island, though no one mentioned them. The fun and games were over; our little day trip had suddenly become very serious business.

The weather continued to worsen, and quickly. A wind picked up shivering foliage and small twigs, and it started to rain lightly. The clouds blocked out the sun completely, so everything was lit in a premature, felt-gray twilight, more dusk than midafternoon.

“Great,” Pepper said, holding out his free hand to verify it was raining.

“Maybe it will blow over,” I said.

“I checked the forecast this morning,” he said. “The meteorologist didn’t say anything about rain today. I swear.”

“What channel do you watch?” Nitro asked him.

“Canal de las Estrellas.”

“Switch to El Trece. The weather girl on that one…” He whistled. “Major smoking hot front, you know what I’m saying?”

“Do you have a girlfriend, Muscles?” I asked him.

“What’s it to you, Jack Goff?”

“I take that as a no.”

“Take it whichever way you want, brother.”