blood trail disappears under the door of an unmarked storefront. The window is draped black; there is no way to see inside.
He knows this place from when he was a kid. It was some kind of market then, a secret little shop that had no sign and didn’t advertise in the tourist literature. For all he knows it may still be. Something about the place clangs against his memory—the dreamy recollection of walking by with Christy and seeing a huge green dragonfly trapped inside the window.
What did he glimpse in there? Something that he didn’t understand, that he barely registered except as a place he didn’t belong. He hasn’t thought of this since it happened; it is filed deep with all the other imponderables of childhood. But something bad.
Henry turns around and starts running.
Going as fast as his aching joints will permit, he trots through the middle of town, what would normally be the busiest part, searching for signs of life. He goes past the pizza and ice cream places, the little indoor shopping center, the Post Office. The windows are decorated in a way they never were before, with oddly composed still-lifes of fruit and raw meat and other more random items of plenty set out like offerings, with paper money strung up like bunting.
Everywhere he goes he begins to notice fresh-painted graffiti, the same symbol over and over: a buffalo’s horned head, weeping blood—the stylized face looks half human. Henry scans the beach and the pier. Nothing. He tries to enter the lobby of Arbuthnot’s hotel, the expensive Sand Crab Inn, and finds it dark, the glass entrance sealed.
“Hello?” He jumps the fence into the hotel courtyard and walks down the line of doors, his voice echoing against the building. “I’m looking for a Carol Arbuthnot! Mr. Arbuthnot! Can someone hear me? I have an emergency!”
There is no response, and Henry is about ready to despair when out of nowhere a thick, grumpy voice calls, “The hell’s your problem?”
It is Arbuthnot himself, up on the second floor. He looks like he’s been napping, dressed only in a shorts and a t-shirt. The unexpected sight of that brutal mug is as welcome to Henry right now as the appearance of a Christmas angel.
“Mr. Arbuthnot! I’m sorry to bother you, but I need your help—it’s important.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Henry Cadmus—I overheard you the other day talking about some missing persons that you were checking into? Well, I’ve found out what it’s all about.”
Yawning and rubbing his eyes, the big man says, “Oh really? Well you better come on up, I guess, or I’ll never get any sleep.”
Once Henry is in the room with him, Arbuthnot holds off hearing the story to take some aspirin and go to the bathroom. “Fucking jet lag,” he grumbles apologetically. The room is a mess, with liquor bottles and take-out boxes and paperwork laid out on every available surface. It smells stale. After a moment Arbuthnot comes back out and starts putting on his pants.
Unable to wait another second, Henry blurts, “Mr. Arbuthnot, my daughter is missing, and I think she may have been kidnapped.”
“Do you know you smell like gasoline?”
“Yes. That’s all part of it. Earlier today I was almost killed trying to find my mother up at that Shady Acres place, and now I believe they’ve got my daughter, too. They’re following me! The whole town is in on it!”
Nodding thoughtfully, Arbuthnot circles behind Henry to get a shirt off the hanger. “Shady Isle, you mean. I see…”
All at once there is a gun pressed to Henry’s skull.
“Cut out the bullshit,” Arbuthnot says in his ear. “Who are you working for?”
Dry-mouthed, Henry says, “Nobody. I’m here for the same reason you are.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’m looking for answers.”
“Start making sense, asshole.”
“A few months ago my mother came to this island and disappeared. I traced her to that Shady Isle, but she’s not there—no one is. The whole place is just a front for a gigantic identity-theft mill. They take people’s identities and make them disappear.” He recounts everything that happened, everything he failed to tell Ruby. “I know it sounds insane, but I was just up there and saw the whole thing! They’ve got it going like a regular assembly-line.”
“That’s bullshit. I’ve been up there and interviewed some of the residents. It all checks out.”
“How did you manage to go in? By appointment?”
“Yes.”
“Then they put on a dog and pony show for you. That’s how it works!”