“Absolutely. I’m thinking more of Lazlo. He must be dejected.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He’ll recover easily enough. He’s nothing if not resilient, I’ll give him that,” Remi conceded.

“Still. It’s out there somewhere.”

Remi stared off down the hallway at the police going about their grim business and nodded to herself.

“Yes, it is, Selma. Yes, it is. But you can’t win them all, right?”

“I’m sorry. You must have dropped out, I didn’t catch that last bit . . .”

They laughed together, the sound musical and easy, and Selma reminded Remi again to call that evening and let her know how Sam was faring, and to be careful—she’d been following news of the rioting online and was clearly worried.

“I will, Selma.” Remi smiled. “And thank you. For everything.”

“What did I do now?” Selma asked warily.

“Just for being you.”

CHAPTER 51

Morning mist hung thick in the air the following day as Remi motored along the logging road into the mountains, Lazlo and Leonid in the backseat, Sam riding shotgun. Sam had slept fitfully but after an early breakfast insisted he felt fine, and when they’d stopped in at the hospital with Lazlo before heading to the caves at Fleming’s request, Leonid had been waiting to be released, grumbling at the staff as he signed the discharge papers.

As Fleming had predicted, the civil unrest had run its course once the Prime Minister had addressed the nation and by morning the only evidence of the prior day’s rioting were a few smoldering storefronts on the southern end of the city and a notably increased police presence in town. The police chief had called on the Fargos that morning at their hotel to invite them back to the caves to walk him through and offer their impressions, which they’d only briefly discussed during the controlled chaos of the previous day.

Remi looked over at Sam as they neared the end point of the logging road, where a wall of police vehicles was visible in the distance.

“How’s the head?” she asked. She’d been trying to minimize the bouncing by swerving around the worst of the potholes—a tactic doomed to failure because of the deep grooves scored into the mud by the police trucks.

“I’m not going to be taking up the drums anytime soon, but I’ll manage,” Sam said.

“How about you, Leonid?”

“Compared to sleeping on that Australian rust bucket, I feel fine,” the Russian griped.

“Tell us again how you managed to get back to the main cave and then track us down and save us,” Lazlo said.

“Easy. I came to, climbed up, followed the islanders, and then whacked one when the rest were outside with the woman,” Leonid explained as though it was all as ordinary as taking a stroll around the hotel grounds.

Lazlo stared at him in amazement and shook his head. “Must be all the vodka.”

“My body is temple,” Leonid declared, exaggerating his Russian accent.

“Yes, well, mine too, albeit heavily supplemented by the fermented grape until recently.”

The Mitsubishi rolled to a stop near a forensic van, and a stern-faced island cop stared them down as they climbed out of the SUV. A dozen journalists sat in the shade, their vans nearby, watching the police watch them.

“Is Chief Fleming around?” Sam asked. “He invited us out.”

“Up that way. Who should I tell him is here?” the officer asked, holding his radio.

“The Fargos.”

The officer’s face changed. “Oh. Of course. One moment.” He mumbled into the radio and was greeted by a burst of static followed by a terse instruction. He eyed the journalists briefly and then pointed the way to the first cave. “You know how to get there?”

“I think we can find it,” Sam said. Remi had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing.

Fleming was standing at the cave entry when they arrived, talking to two other officers with dour expressions. When Fleming spotted the Fargos, he broke off his discussion and moved down to greet them.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“You’re welcome. How’s it going?” Sam said.

“Slow but steady. Forensics should be done soon enough.” He scowled up at the cave. “We’ve compiled a list of all missing children and we’ve begun matching them to skeletons.”

“No doubt you’ve seen that some were bound with zip ties.”

Fleming nodded. “Yes.” The distaste on his face conveyed more than words could.

“Has she talked?” Remi asked.

“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation, but let’s just say that she denied everything, and then changed her story three times, before admitting that she might have been an unwitting pawn in several foreign drug companies’ schemes.”

“Unbelievable,” Sam said.

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it. She’s quite a piece of work.”

“How many on your list?” Lazlo asked.

Fleming looked away. “Thirty-eight. Spanning six years.” His eyes darted to the side before settling on Remi. “Off the record, she admitted that sometimes the drugs she was experimenting with caused unexpected complications, but she insists that she was just trying to save lives.”

“Of course. By killing some of her patients with medicine she hadn’t told them was experimental and then hiding the evidence,” Remi fired back.

“Don’t forget the grief she caused by covering up their disappearances,” Sam reminded. “Imagine how the parents felt when their sick children just vanished.”

“Yes . . . Actually, that’s one of the prosecutor’s big fears—retribution by relatives. It’s a very real danger that she’ll be lynched.”

“Ironic that you’ll wind up having to protect her,” Lazlo said.

Fleming gave him a dark look. “The islanders who were working for her all tested positive for stimulants. She was supplying them with speed, keeping them dependent on her for their fixes, which we believe was part of how she was controlling them. They were addicts, and dangerous ones—it explains why they were willing to live out here and risk everything to torture their fellow man.”

“She probably also promised them that they’d be rich. She was bragging about how she’d be worth billions, when she held us captive,” Sam said.

“Any progress on matching the bones in the cave with the list?” Remi asked.

“We started with the largest skeletons, figuring they’d be easiest to identify. The one that’s not completely decomposed was named Aldo Cosgrove. A teenager who disappeared a couple of weeks ago after undergoing treatment for malaria by the good doctor.” Fleming shook his head. “The abuse he was subjected to . . .” His voice trailed off and he rubbed a hand across his face, his eyes bleak. “Lilly’s fortunate you got to her when you did. She wasn’t far behind him.”

“We believe that the older skeletons in the pit were victims from the war,” Remi said. “Our researcher discovered that Dr. Vanya’s grandfather was helping the Japanese with medical experiments on islanders.” She told the chief about Selma’s findings.

“It just gets worse, doesn’t it?” Fleming said, staring at the cave opening.

“Do you know if the grandfather’s still alive?” Sam asked.

“I don’t think so—he’d have to be ancient—but I’ll check. I remember her saying something about all her relatives being dead.”

“We think the grandfather might have shown Carol his old stomping ground, probably bragging. That’s the likeliest explanation for how she found the cave used for the experiments.”

“It’s funny,” Fleming said. “I grew up here and heard plenty of stories about monsters in the caves. I never suspected that the monsters were walking among us every day.” He paused, thinking. “We’re going to be getting help from Australia. They’re sending a team to work the pit with us and try to make sense out of the skeletons. But it sounds like that will be a long process, trying to match bones to POWs or islanders killed during the war.”