Mychal Poitier gave Thom a complicated route to get to the main highway that led them to their destination—SW Road. The point of this evasion was to see if the gold Mercury was following them. Poitier assured him that the car did not contain officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force conducting surveillance. The tail might have to do with Moreno or something else entirely. A well-dressed and vulnerable American in a wheelchair might simply have aroused the interest of thieves.

Rhyme called Pulaski, who was still at the inn, and told him where they’d be. The young officer continued to wait for the maid who might have more information about the sniper’s intelligence gathering at the inn the day before the shooting.

Once past the airport the traffic thinned and Thom sped up, piloting the van along SW Road and its gentle arc around the island, past manicured gated communities, past shacks decorated with laundry on lines and goats in pens, past swamps and then an endless mass of forest and greenery—Clifton Heritage Park.

“Here, turn here,” Poitier said.

They had arrived at a dirt road, which veered right and led through a wide, rusting gate, which was open. The road followed a narrow outcropping of land that extended a half mile into Clifton Bay. The spit was a few feet above sea level, dotted with trees and brush and scruffy bare spots, lined with a shore that was rocky in some places, sandy in others. The road was bordered with Do Not Swim signs. No explanation was given but the water was noxious, sickly green and singularly unappealing.

Thom followed the road, which skirted the north edge of the spit, past the several commercial facilities Poitier had alluded to in the restaurant earlier. The first they passed, at the intersection of the unnamed drive and SW Road, was the public trash yard where several fires burned and a dozen people wandered about, picking for anything of value. Next was the tire recycling operation and finally the metal fabricating plant composed of several low shacks so unsubstantial that it looked as if a gentle breeze, forget a hurricane, could have blown them down. The businesses were identified by hand-painted signs. Fences were topped with barbed wire and tense dogs prowled the grounds, squat and broad-chested—very different from the potcake they’d shared lunch with.

Clouds of smoke, yellow and gray, lingered defiantly, as if too heavy to be moved by the breezes.