Micro

Watching Danny, Peter said, “Bark scrapings of Strychnos toxifera tree, add oleander, sap not leaf, include Chondrodendron tomentosum if it’s available, boil the mixture for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Let’s get started,” Karen King said.

“We could find these plants a lot more easily in the morning light,” Jenny Linn said. “What’s the rush?”

“The rush,” Karen said, “is those halogen lamps back at the entrance. Right now Vin Drake could be heading here to kill us.” She swung the pack over her shoulders and tightened the straps. “So let’s get started.”

Chapter 13

Alapuna Road 29 October, 2:00 a.m.

In bright moonlight, they hadn’t much cover. The dense hau bush that clung to the cliff side stopped at the level of the dirt road, and it was only too easy to see the two cars driving along the narrow volcanic ridge. To the left, the land sloped down gently to agricultural fields. To the right, a steep cliff ended at crashing surf on the north shore of Oahu.

Alyson drove the first car, the Bentley convertible. Whenever she hesitated, Vin Drake waved her on from the second car, the BMW. They still had a distance to go to reach the washed-out bridge. Finally he could see it in the moonlight, cream-colored concrete from the 1920s; amazing it had lasted that long.

Alyson stopped and started to get out of the car. “No, no,” he said, waving her back in. “You have to dress it.”

“Dress it?”

“Yes. The students are all jammed into the Bentley, remember? They’re partying.” He was carrying a laundry bag full of clothes and other items he’d collected from what the students had left in the front office and in the Bentley parked at Nanigen: several phones, shorts, T-shirts, bathing suits, a towel, a couple of rolled-up issues of Nature and Science, a tablet computer-she started tossing the things at random around the car.

“No, no,” he said. “Alyson, please. We have to decide where everyone was sitting.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Very well, we still have to do it.”

“It’ll all get messed up when you push it over the cliff.”

“Alyson. We still have to do it.”

“But the police…the bodies will be missing. They won’t be in the car…”

“The water is full of rip currents. And sharks. The sea swallows the dead. That’s why we’re doing it this way, Alyson.”

“Okay, okay,” she answered wearily. “Who’s back rear?”

“Danny.”

She got out a sweater and a well-thumbed Conrad novel, Chance. “Are you sure, Vin? Seems like a setup.”

“Has his name in it.”

“All right. Who’s next to him?”

“Jenny. She feels sorry for him.”

A delicate printed scarf, a belt of white python, shoved back.

“Expensive. Isn’t that illegal?”

“Python? Just in California.”

Then Peter Jansen’s glasses, a pair he was always losing; Erika Moll’s bathing suit; and a pair of board shorts.

They went on to finish dressing the front seat, with Karen King driving. Then Vin Drake splashed lab alcohol over the back of the car, cracked the bottle, dropped it in the front, where it would catch under the dashboard.

“Don’t want to overdo it.” He looked around, at the fleecy clouds in dark blue, the white surf far below. “Beautiful night,” he said, shaking his head. “Beautiful world we live in.” He walked to the left side of the car and surveyed it from a distance. “There’s a downslope just ahead,” he said. “Drive a few yards until you hit the downslope, and then you can get out and we can push the rest.”

“Hey.” Alyson held up her hands. “I, uh…I don’t want to get in there again, Vin.”

“Don’t be silly. We’re talking ten feet of driving. Just ten feet.”

“But what if something-”

“Nothing will happen.”

“Why don’t you drive to the downslope, Vin?”

“Alyson.” A firm eye in the darkness. “I’m taller, I’d have to move the seat back, it would look suspicious in a police investigation.”

“But-”

“We agreed.” He opened the door for her. “Come on, now.”

She hesitated.

“We agreed, Alyson.”

She got behind the wheel, shivering despite the evening warmth.

“Now put up the top,” he said.

“The top? Why?” she asked.

“To keep everything in the car.”

She turned on the engine, pressed a button, and the Bentley’s top rose and folded over. Vin stood some distance away, and with his hand indicated for her to move the car forward. The car tilted downward, slid a few feet-she yelped-then it skidded to a stop.

“Okay, perfect,” Vin said, reaching into his pocket for the nitrile lab gloves. “Keep it there. In park, engine on.”