“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, y’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 A1. 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 I also knew 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 much I missed her. I choked hard and turned my face toward the window. I went deep inside myself.

Suddenly, bright light shone in my eyes. The car had 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 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 surrealistic. 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 sounded like a tin drum being pounded in a tunnel. I felt every bump in the road like a hard punch.

Beatitude? Who is the woman they’re holding? Can it possibly be Christine?

Sampson checked the load in his Glock. I heard the mechanism slide and click and glanced his way.

“They won’t be happy to see us, but you won’t need the gun,” Anthony turned and said. “They probably know we’re coming. They watch the local roads. Christine Johnson might not be here now, if she was ever here at all. But I knew you would want to see for yourself.”