“She says,” Noboru translated, “the girl is dead now, trapped among the ghosts in the land of the dead. If you go after her, you will be trapped too. Become a ghost yourself.”
Gabriel put the picture of Joyce away in his jacket pocket. “I’ll take my chances. Will she at least let us see Joyce’s room?”
Noboru asked and Merpati chewed her lip. When she finally replied, Noboru said, “For fifty Ringgit she’ll let us up—that’s about ten dollars. It’s a lot here.”
“Hell,” Gabriel said, digging in his pocket, “I can do better than that.” He pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, unfolded it and held it out to the old woman. She eyed him warily, then snatched it out of his hand. She stared at it briefly, crumpled it in her palm and hid it away in a pocket in her torn shift. She muttered something out of the side of her mouth.
“She says we can’t stay long. It’s a full moon tonight, and apparently that’s when the spirits are at their strongest. She doesn’t want you hanging around and bringing the ghosts back.”
“No, we definitely wouldn’t want that. Listen,” Gabriel said, “you should go. It’s getting dark, and you’ve got a long drive back. I can take it from here.”
“You kidding?” Noboru said. “I like my job. Nice hours, good benefits. How long do you think your brother would let me keep it if I left you in the middle of the jungle by yourself?”
“I’m not a Ph.D. student on her own in Borneo for the first time,” Gabriel said. “I can handle myself.”
“Against ghosts?” Noboru asked with a grin. “Two’s better than one against ghosts.”
“Against practically anything,” Gabriel acknowledged. “All right. Just stay close and don’t wander off. One missing person is enough.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. Didn’t I just tell you I’m not going anywhere?”
“You armed?”
Noboru lifted his pants leg to reveal a long knife strapped to his calf.
Gabriel nodded. “I guess that counts.”
Merpati led them to the door of the guesthouse. Gabriel noticed a short wooden post had been hammered into the ground by the door, and atop it was a goat’s skull, like the one they’d seen on the road. Merpati’s attempt to protect the house from the evil spirits that took Joyce, presumably. The old woman brought them inside, past a kitchen that smelled like spicy stew and steamed pork, and up a wooden staircase to the second floor. The warped steps creaked loudly under their weight. Barring the culprits actually having been ghosts, which Gabriel was inclined to doubt, there was no way they could have sneaked up these stairs to take Joyce without being heard. Which suggested that whoever had taken her must have found another way in.
On the second floor, a long corridor ran the length of the building, five doors lined up along one side. Each door they passed was open, each room empty but for a neatly made bed with a short dresser beside it. Nothing on any of the beds, nothing on any of the dressers.
“The other boarders must have left after Joyce was taken,” Noboru said.
“Can you blame them?” Gabriel said.
Merpati stopped in front of the last door, which was the only one that was closed. She pulled a ring of long, heavy keys out of her pocket, unlocked the door and pushed it open for them. Gabriel and Noboru walked past her into the room. The old woman hung back, reluctant to set foot inside. She shouted something at Noboru. Gabriel didn’t need him to translate that time. Merpati wanted them to finish quickly and go.
Looking at the state of Joyce’s room, Gabriel could understand Merpati’s reaction. Everything was in a shambles. The dresser’s drawers had been dumped, the bed stripped, the mattress slashed. Clothing, books and personal items were scattered everywhere—Gabriel nudged a hairbrush with his foot. On the far wall, the window was shattered, the broken glass taped over with a bedsheet. He crossed to the window, pulled the sheet aside, and stuck his head through, taking care to avoid the jagged edges. This must have been how they’d gotten in. It was probably the way they’d taken her out, too, maybe with a ladder or a rope, after tossing the room and its contents.
“What do you think they were looking for?” Noboru said.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “But it’s clear they weren’t here just for Joyce. You don’t have to slash open the mattress if you just want her.”
Noboru squatted to sort through the books on the floor. Gabriel did the same to search the items that had been dumped from the drawers. It was mostly clothing, but under a crumpled pair of pants he found Joyce’s passport and beside it an old-style analog wristwatch, similar to the one Gabriel himself wore. Its face was cracked, the hands stopped at 3:10. “Well, now we know what time it happened,” Gabriel said, showing Noboru the broken watch. Then he lifted the passport. “And we can rule out one possibility. If it had been bandits, they would never have left a U.S. passport behind.”
“No,” Noboru said. “You can get more on the black market for one of those than you can for most hostages.”
“So if not bandits, who?”
“You ruling out the ‘faceless ghosts’ theory?” Noboru said, then before Gabriel could answer he raised one hand. “Hang on. This looks promising.” He pulled a composition notebook out of the pile. “It’s her expedition journal.” He began flipping through the pages. “Let’s see, arrived in Borneo, met Mr. Noboru at the airport. Oh look, she says I seemed ‘interesting.’” He kept going, scanning lines of cribbed handwriting quickly. “Looks like she spent most of her time exploring the fringes of the jungle. And look at that.” He tapped the bottom of one page with his forefinger. “She writes here that she thinks she’s being followed.”
“Let me see.”
Noboru passed Gabriel the journal. The entry in question was dated one week back.
Probably imagining it, but…I think someone was following me at the Malawi River today. Not someone I’d ever seen before. But everywhere I went in the marketplace, this guy was there. Kept turning away and pretending to look at pottery or whatever when I caught him staring in my direction. Didn’t look Bornean, which made it kind of hard for him to disappear in the crowd. One of those bandits N warned about? But he didn’t look like that at all. Merpati’s opinion when I told her about it was just that “it’s dangerous for single women to wander around without a man.” Well there’s a newsflash. But I’m damned if I’m going to hide in my room.
The Malawi River? What was she doing there? What was she doing anywhere but the university archives?
Gabriel flipped ahead, scanning the pages for any more mentions of being followed, but didn’t find anything until the final entry. It was dated Wednesday, the same day Michael had gotten his last e-mail from her. Joyce’s handwriting was noticeably different, more uneven and hurried:
Another guy following me today at the marketplace in Tarakan. Definitely not the same man, though same type—white guy, maybe five-eight, five-nine, and too damn interested in everything else around him anytime I turned to look at him. This one had curly hair and a beard. White shirt, brown pants. He followed me for a good ten minutes, before I finally lost him in the crowd. Damn it. Could this have something to do with SOA?
Gabriel looked up from the page. “SOA. Any idea what that might be?”
“School of the Arts? Society of Actuaries? State of Alert?”
Gabriel walked back to where Merpati stood wringing her hands in the doorway and showed her the page in the book. He pointed to the letters “SOA.” She shook her head and started talking loudly, gesturing back toward the stairs.