“Oh.” I feel my face growing hot. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s why I hate the place. My father abused me from the time I was ten, my cousin later. It really messed me up. I ran away when I was old enough, but it took me a long time to come to terms with it. I’ve never really gotten over it. I can’t have a man on top of me, no matter how much I might care for him. That’s why I choose women. It’s a safe harbor for me. I used to think that might change, but I don’t think it ever will.”

“I understand.”

She looks skeptical. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you sexually abused?”

“Not like that. Not by family. But…” I’m suddenly hyperconscious of Baxter and Lenz and Kaiser in the surveillance van, monitoring every word. I feel like a traitor, both to Thalia and to myself, and I want to yank off the transmitter I’m wearing. But if I did, Thalia couldn’t possibly understand.

“Take your time,” she says. “Would you like some tea?”

“I was raped,” I say softly, not quite believing the words as they fall from my mouth. “It was a long time ago.”

“Time doesn’t mean anything when it’s that.”

“You’re right.”

“Was it a friend?”

“No. I was in Honduras, during the war in El Salvador. I was just starting out, really. I’d been photographing this refugee camp with a couple of print reporters, and we got separated. They left without me, and I had to walk back to the town. This car came along and stopped for me. There were government soldiers in the car. Four of them, one an officer. They were polite and smiling. They said they’d take me into town. I was always really careful, but it was a long way back to town. I took the ride. A mile down the road, they turned off and drove me into the jungle. So far that no one could hear me screaming. I know, because I lost my voice that night.”

“It’s all right,” Thalia murmurs. “I’m here with you.”

“I know. But it’s not all right. It’s never gotten all right. I’m more ashamed of that than anything I’ve ever done.”

“You didn’t do anything, Jordan. What did you do? You accepted a ride from men who said they’d help you.”

Tears of anger and self-disgust sting my eyes. “I’m not talking about the rape. I’m talking about after. Before they started, they tied my hands behind my back. There was no way to fight, and it went on for hours. At some point during the night I passed out. At dawn I woke up with my arms numb but my hands free. I followed the tire tracks out to the road, then limped into town bleeding and crying. I didn’t tell a soul what they’d done. I thought I was so tough, but I didn’t have the nerve even to go to a hospital. I thought if the people I worked for found out what had happened, they’d pull me out of there before I knew what hit me. Not to protect me, but because they’d think I couldn’t handle myself. You know? I hate myself for that fear. I’ve been haunted ever since by the women who might have been raped after me because I didn’t report those men.”

Thalia slowly shakes her head. “There were probably women before you and women after. But it’s over now. You’ve punished yourself enough. Those soldiers are dead. If they’re not physically dead, their souls are. What matters is how you are now. That’s the only thing you can change.”

“I know that.”

“Your head knows it, but not your heart. That’s where you have to know it, Jordan.”

“I know. I try.”

“You’re afraid for your sister, aren’t you? Afraid she’ll have to go through something like that.”

“Or worse.”

“Okay, but look what you’re doing. You’re doing everything humanly possible to find her. More than any other relative of these women, I’ll bet.”

“I have to know, Thalia.”

“You will, honey. You’ll know.” She lifts the enormous cat and sets it on the floor, then walks over and pulls me to my feet. “Come in the kitchen. I’m going to make you some green tea.”

“I’m sorry I did this. You’re the first person I ever told that to, and I don’t know why I did. I don’t even know you.”

Thalia Laveau places both her hands on my shoulders and looks deep into my eyes. “You know what?”

“What?”

“You just found a friend at forty.”

A strange feeling akin to religious absolution rolls through my chest.

“Now, come on in this kitchen, girl.”

Thirty minutes later, I walk down the rickety stairs and hear John Kaiser whispering to me from the corner of the house.

“This way, Jordan.”

I don’t want to see him, but there’s no avoiding it. When I go around the corner, he falls into step beside me.

“I’m sorry we heard that,” he says. “I’m sorry it happened to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I must be walking very fast, because even with his long stride, Kaiser is having trouble staying beside me.

“I’m sorry about the way I talked about the rape Roger Wheaton stopped in Vietnam,” he says.

The van comes into sight, rolling slowly toward us along the street.

“What do you want, Jordan? Just tell me.”

“I want to go to my hotel and take a shower.”

“You’re on your way.”

“And I don’t want to ride in the van.”

“I’ll get a car here. I’ll wait with you, then drop you. Okay?”

I don’t look at him. I feel a powerful, irrational anger toward him, and at the knowledge that he desires me. He wants to hold me now, to comfort me, but he can’t. Only a woman I foolishly believed could have been involved with my sister’s disappearance could comfort me, and she has already done what she could.

The surveillance van stops, and its rear door opens. Kaiser trots over behind the door, then jogs back to me.

“A surveillance car is on the way. In one minute, you’ll be on your way to your hotel. Okay?”

I fix him with a level gaze. “Thalia didn’t know me. She’d never seen me before in her life. Which means she’s never seen Jane. You got that, right?”

“Right.”

“Good.”

17

In the shower in my hotel room, my composure finally blows apart, spinning images through my head without coherence: Wingate trying to save his painting, flames licking at his feet; soldiers tying my hands and pressing my face into the jungle floor; my brother-in-law kissing my neck, trying to bed the ghost of his wife; de Becque watching me with a glint in his eye as he doles out bits of information about my father…

I turn the water as hot as I can stand it, my eyes closed against the spray even as I see the four strange souls I encountered today: a dying man, a violent man, a feminine man, and a wounded woman. Yesterday I had some hope of resolution. I was fooled by the confidence of men in their systems and their evidence, by the illusion of progress, by the belief that time must inevitably yield some answer. But deep down I know that time, like fate, operates under no imperative. What are those men saying now, after the failure of their grand plan? Baxter. Lenz. Kaiser. They paraded me past their suspects and saw not one flicker of panic. Not even a flinch at my face -

A telephone is ringing. At first I think it’s in my head, because it’s impossibly loud. Then I pull back the shower curtain and see a phone mounted on the wall, low by the commode. I press my right palm into the white towel on the rack, then pick up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“It’s John.”

“John?”

“Kaiser.” He sounds uncomfortable.

“Oh. What is it?”

“I’m still downstairs.”

“Why?”

“We’re about to have a meeting. Before the official task force meeting. Baxter, Lenz, Bowles, and me. I know you’re upset, but I thought you might be more angry if you missed it.”

“I’m in the shower. It’s basically going to be a wake, right?”

“I don’t think so. I just spoke to Baxter on my cell. He says he has a couple of new things.”