The Voice inside My Head (10 page)

“Anything you can tell me about her would help,” I say.

“She was in here a lot,” he says, still watching the kids. “Couldn’t get enough of my barbecued chicken, you know?”

“No,” I say, feeling suddenly tired. “Patricia’s been a vegan since she was old enough to say ‘Hold the mayo.’ So, no, I really don’t know.”

He looks at me in surprise. “Vegans eat meat-lovers’ pizza?”

I sigh.

“Did you know she had a boyfriend?” he asks, taking a gulp of his coffee.

“I know about Jamie,” I say.

He smiles in relief. “Jamie’s a friend. I promised not to spread it around that they were going together. I think he was worried his family might not approve, but you can’t get much warmer people than Utilans. They’ve accepted the likes of me, all the way from Africa, and that’s saying something.” He gives his bellowing laugh again but then turns serious. “I guess you know Tricia and Jamie fought that night, then?” I try not to look surprised.

“Jamie didn’t go into all the details,” I say carefully.

“I don’t imagine there’s much more I can tell you. We were busy that night. They came in happy, but he left early and she stayed on. She was really knocking them back hard. That’s how I figured they’d been fighting. Your sister likes a drink, but she knows her limits.”

The way I see it, she’d been pushing her limits with a lot more than alcohol.

“Who was she with after Jamie left?”

He looks at me steadily. “Sorry, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know all the dive kids. One of the girls who works for me might know, though. Jamie came by later that night asking the same questions you are.”

“I appreciate your help.” I fight to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

“Come back some evening and talk to the girls. They might have seen something.”

I nod.

Finishing the last of my spiked coffee, I stand up, get a rush of blood to my head, grab the table for support and wait for the dizziness to subside. With the heat and my lack of sleep, the alcohol might not have been the best idea. I should probably go back to my room and crash for a bit, but I head to Bluewater. Lemon said we should get an early start to the bush-doctor lady and it’s already nearly midday. Maybe Zach’s back from his dive and we can get going.

Out on the road, I feel my pocket to make sure the voodoo doll is still where I put it after I washed my shorts. I shake my head at the notion that it might be anywhere else. Zach’s
conviction that it has supernatural powers must have me more rattled than I thought.

The road’s busy now, with bicycles, motorcycles and golf carts competing with pedestrians for the limited space. I duck into a store to buy water and get distracted by the surprising array of options on the shelves. It’s stifling, with only a couple of ceiling fans pushing around the humid air, and it’s small, even by convenience-store standards, but there’s a bit of everything and a lot of familiar brand names. I pick up an ice-cream pop as well as the water. The girl at the cash gives me the price in Spanish, which, of course, I don’t understand, but I read it off her register and count out the change in lempiras.

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting on the dock at Bluewater, having learned that their dive boat’s still out but due back soon. The fish life here isn’t nearly as varied as under the shark dock. There’s a school of round, blue, disc-shaped fish and a couple of long pipefish but no rays or boxy things. I swing my legs off the dock in relative confidence they won’t be ripped from my body and wave at passing boatmen because every single one of them waves at me. It gets old after the third or fourth time, so I decide to lie down and give my eyes a rest.

The dock is hard, and I have to shift around a bit to avoid getting jabbed by protruding nails. I don’t plan on sleeping, but the next thing I know, Zach is shaking me awake in the middle of a dream where I’m making out with the hot Swedish chick. I’m glad he woke me because the Swedish chick had just morphed into Reesie, who did not look pleased to discover my hand up her shirt. I take a minute to catch my breath, my heart still racing, and notice the sun’s moved considerably in the sky. It’s got to be well past noon.

“Dude, I told you not to leave your room,” says Zach, looking worried.

“Yeah.” I try to shake off the memory of me and Reesie up close and personal. “Sorry. I got bored.”

“Well, you’re not hurt or anything,” Zach admits, though he doesn’t sound convinced. “Help me haul in this gear and we can get going.”

He climbs back in the boat and picks up a tank, holding it aloft. “Grab it,” he shouts.

I jump up to help him but stand aside for a couple of divers scrambling off. They’re going on about rays and turtles. I don’t tell them they could have seen just as much sitting on the shark dock without risking their lives. Zach wasn’t joking about business being slow. The captain and three dive masters, including Zach, outnumber the paying divers. I’m not surprised his job’s on the line, and I feel a stab of guilt that I refused to sign up with him. For the next ten minutes, I overcompensate by working twice as fast as any of them, hauling gear.

“You’re the best, Luke,” says Zach, standing back in admiration as I walk past him lugging tanks, two at a time.

“Go have your shower,” I say. “I’ll get the rest of this.”

“Cosmic,” says Zach, his eyes shining. I don’t think he has a lot of experience with people doing nice things for him. I’m mostly just trying to ease my own conscience, but I’m really glad it makes him happy.

“Glad to help,” I say.

I carry the last of the tanks into the dive shack, where a petite girl in a tiny string bikini is loading fins and masks into a
large concrete sink. No question, there are some advantages to island living.

“I’m Luke.” I give her a friendly smile as I set down the tanks next to the dozen or so already there. “You might have known my sister, Patricia.”

“Oh, wow, sure.” She looks at me with sympathy. “Zach told me you were here searching for her. I’m so sorry.”

I feel a rush of hope. At least she knows Pat. It’s a start, though given the size of the island and the fact that they’re in related lines of work, it would probably be more surprising if she didn’t.

“You didn’t happen to be at the Spiny Starfish the night she disappeared, did you?”

“Sure, we’ve all talked about how weird it was. One minute she was there and the next she wasn’t. It was like she just vanished.… ”

She turns away, busying herself with rinsing equipment. I’m disappointed, but she could still know something important, even if she doesn’t think she does.

“Did you see who she was with?”

She turns back and furrows her brow. “A lot of people. She was talking to a guy from the Shark Center for quite a while. I don’t remember his name.”

“Pete?” I ask, trying not to sound too eager.

“Yeah,” she says slowly. “I think so. He seemed way into her, but it was totally one-sided. You know what I mean? He was practically climbing onto her lap, and she looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there. I think she had a boyfriend, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, so I’ve been told.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, that Shark Center guy didn’t look like he was giving up easily.”

“Did she seem scared of him?” I’m not sure what answer I want to hear, but she shakes her head.

“No, not all, she just looked irritated and a bit bored. I guess that’s why she took off.”

“But you didn’t see her leave?”

“No, like I said, the guy was pawing her and she kept pushing him off. The next time I looked over, she was gone.”

She returns her attention to the sink and starts transferring the rinsed equipment onto a nearby shelf. I think about how much I’d like to run straight back to the Shark Center and beat the shit out of Pete. Instead I pitch in and help, to give her some time in case she remembers something else. It’s frustrating how many people saw Pat on her last night, some even realizing she was upset, but no one caring enough to notice when she walked out of their lives. I know they couldn’t have anticipated she was going to disappear; I just wish someone had asked her why she was drinking so much or had told Pete to leave her alone.

I don’t believe Pete’s unwanted attention would have made Pat do something crazy. She was used to getting hit on. Even a fight with Jamie wouldn’t have pushed her over the edge. Pat’s seen way more drama in our home life than anyone here could throw at her, and I know she doesn’t fall apart easily, but I’m beginning to get an idea of her last night and I don’t like it one bit. My sister needed help and no one on this island gave it to her.

We continue to work in silence. She rinses equipment while I sort it by function — fins in one bin, masks in another,
dive weights stacked on a shelf above them next to belts and respirators, suits and dive vests hung to dry. Finally, Zach pops his head in the door. “Let’s go, brother. It’s time to rock and roll.”

I give the girl a polite nod, even though, unfair as it is, I’m feeling angry at her for not rescuing Pat. She thanks me for my help and tells me again how she sorry is. It seems heartfelt, and I feel guilty for blaming her. It’s not like I’m in any doubt who’s really to blame.

I
notice Zach has a very full pack for a quick hike into the bush.

“What you got in there?” I ask as we stride down the main road.

“Nectar of the gods,” says Zach mysteriously.

“Beer?”

“No, man.” He looks offended for a nanosecond before a thought occurs to him and he smiles sheepishly. “Well, yeah, that, too. But I brought something even more important.” He pauses, thinks for a minute. “Equally important,” he amends and swings his pack off his shoulder so he can reach one hand in to yank out a bottle.

“Bug juice,” he crows, punching the air with it. “You should put some on right away. You may already have bites.”

I look down at my arms, covered in red marks that are starting to swell.

“A few,” I say, taking the bottle from him. I spray as we walk, wincing as the bug poison soaks into some of the bites I’ve scratched raw.

We have to cut across the island, which means taking the road straight up the hill from the pier. We pass the turnoff for Reesie’s house, and in minutes we’re walking past farms and then deserted bush. Next to the road, the trees are scrubby, but as the paved road curves round toward a small airport, we keep straight, following a dirt track, and suddenly we’re in rainforest. The canopy of soaring palms and massive fruit trees blocks out most of the light as we pick our way over looping vines and fallen logs. We have to detour off the track several times to skirt deep, water-filled trenches, and each time we find our way back, it seems more overgrown. Clearly, it’s not a well-traveled route. I ask Zach repeatedly if he’s sure we’re going the right way as we trudge, swat, hop and duck amid a cacophony of birds and buzzing insects.

Two hours in, I’ve lost what little faith I had in Zach’s map-reading skills. When he informs me we’re leaving the track to take a narrow path that is so overgrown I wouldn’t have noticed it, I slump down on the nearest log and eye him dubiously.

“You sure about that, buddy?”

“Yeah.” He pulls up his shirt and uses the edge of it to wipe the sweat from his face.

I take a swig from my water bottle and look around.

“Can I look at the map?”

He hands it over, and I smooth out the sweat-soaked napkin to see what must be the track we’re on because it cuts straight across the island, and, sure enough, there’s a dotted line off to the right.

“How do you know this is the right path?” I ask.

Zach opens his bag, pulls out two beers, cracks them open and hands one over. He polishes his off in one go.

“Fourth path,” he says, pointing to a four in the corner of the napkin. “Lemon wrote the four to help me remember.”

“You were counting paths?” I exclaim, impressed.

Zach returns to rummaging through his bag.

“Zach? Were you counting the paths, buddy?”

He swats a bug-eyed dragonfly that torpedoes into his face and turns away to track the sound of a woodpecker high up in an almond tree. I hunker down and sip my beer.