A hand, its fingers outstretched, reaching out of the ground from among the folds of what looked now to be an old cloth coat, reaching up to the unblinking stars, a human hand but not one that had seen the softness of the sweet night sky for scores of years. It stuck out of the dirt, pointing up as if in accusation, and from the white light of the lantern came the gleam of a gold ring still riding a finger of bone, the flesh and muscle having long been devoured by the foul creeping life that prowls the loam for death.

The first thought that came to my mind upon seeing that skeleton hand with a ring on its finger was that maybe now it was time to call in my private investigator, Morris Kapustin.

Belize City to San Ignacio, Belize

WHAT HAD BEEN MERELY rumors of dark doings in the Reddman past were absolutely confirmed by our finding of the corpse with the gold ring behind Veritas. I was certain when we found it that the root of the evil from which redemption had been sought by Grammy Shaw was buried beneath the dead woman’s garden, but I was wrong. That death was an offshoot of some older, more primal crime, and only when that crime was discovered could we begin to unravel the mystery of what had murdered Jacqueline Shaw and threatened the destruction of all traces of the Reddman line. It was that discovery that led me, ultimately, to Belize, where a killer awaits.

I am sitting with my cases on the steps outside the guest house in Belize City, waiting for Canek Panti to take me to San Ignacio. Before me is a guard of low palms and then the unpaved road and then the Caribbean, turning from gray to a brilliant turquoise in the distance. It is five minutes after nine and already the sun is broiling. I look down both sides of Marine Parade but do not see my guide. Sweat is dripping down my shirt and I am thirsty, even though I drank an entire bottle of water at breakfast.

There is a grinding of gears and a hoot and the shaking sound of doubtful brakes. I look up and see Canek Panti leaping out of a battered brown Isuzu Trooper, rushing to grab hold of my bags. He is hatless today, wearing serious black shoes, a clean shirt, his work clothes, I suppose. His face is solemn. “I am sorry I am late, Victor,” says Canek.

“You’re right on time,” I say as I grab my briefcase and take it into the front seat with me. Canek hauls my suitcase into the rear and then jumps back up into the driver’s seat.

“You have a lot to see today,” he says.

“Well, let’s have at it. San Ignacio or bust.”

“Or bust what?”

“It’s an American expression. It means it’s time to go.”

“San Ignacio or we bust apart, then,” he says, nodding seriously, as he grinds the gears and the engine whines and the car shoots forward. He jerks the wheel to the left and the car takes a sharp leaning turn and we are now heading away from the Caribbean.

Canek honks the horn repeatedly on the narrow roads as he edges our way out of the city. He doesn’t talk, concentrating on his maneuvering, biting his lip as he works past the crowds, children wearing maroon or blue or white school uniforms, women with baskets of laundry on their heads, panhandlers and artisans, Rastafarians striding purposefully, thin men, in short sleeves and ties, riding to work on their too-small bicycles. Finally we reach a long narrow road lined with cemeteries. The ground around us is littered with shallow stone tombs, bleached white or dusty black, covered with crosses, guarded by little dogs staring at us impassively as we pass. Once past the cemeteries we begin to speed through the mangrove swamps that grow like a barrier around Belize City and onward along the Western Highway.

Lonely clapboard houses on stilts rise above the sodden ground. The rusted-out hulks of old American cars are half covered by the swamp. Canek leans on his horn as he passes a bus. The landscape is flat and wet and flat and smells of skunk. A ratty old sign in front of nowhere announces that we have reached the Belize Country Club, another urges us to check our animals to keep Belize screwworm free. Canek keeps his foot firmly on the pedal and soon we pass out of the swamps and onto a vast, sandy heath littered with scrub palmetto.

“This used to be a great pine forest,” shouts Canek over the engine’s uneven whine, “and mahogany too. But they cut all the trees and floated them down the river to the ships.”

We drive a long while, seeing nothing but the occasional shack rising askew out of the flat countryside, until to our left we spot the vague outlines of strange peaks, like great haystacks jutting from the flat ground. As we pass by these toothlike rises I begin to see, in the distance, the jagged outlines of the mountains to the west. At a colorful sign planted in the earth Canek slows the Trooper and turns off the highway, pulling the car into the dusty parking lot of a windowless and doorless shack-bar call JB’s Watering Hole.

The place is studded with wooden placards bearing the names and emblems of British Army squadrons that were once stationed in Belize to protect it from Guatemala: “34 Field Squadron, Royal Engineers”; “1st Battalion, No. 2 Company, Irish Guards”; “The Gloucester Regiment, QMs Platoon-25 Hours a Day.” A few men in ratty clothes are drinking already, a young girl is wiping a table. Canek says he needs some water for the car and so I sit under a spinning fan as he works outside.

After a few moments he comes in grinning and tells me everything is fine. “The car gets thirsty,” he says. “Let’s have lunch.” He orders us both stewed chicken in a brown sauce. It comes with coleslaw and rice and beans and even though it is already spicy hot he covers his with an angry red habanero sauce. As we eat we both have a Belikin and he tells me stories about the place, about the wild ex-pat who owned it and how the British soldiers turned it rowdy and how Harrison Ford drank here while filming Mosquito Coast.

“You’re a good guide, Canek. The good guides know all the best bars.”

“It is my country and there are not many bars.”

“This chicken is wonderful.”

“Outside of Belize City it is best to stick with chicken. You don’t have to store it or refrigerate it. When you are ready to eat you just go outside and twist off the head.”

I stare at the thigh I am working on for a moment and then slice off another piece. “What is San Ignacio like?”

“Small and fun. It used to be wilder when the loggers were there but the loggers have moved on and now it is not as wild.”

“Are there good bars there?”

“Yes, I will show you. And on Saturday nights they have dancing at the ruins above the city.”

“If a man was hiding out, would he hide out in San Ignacio?”

“No, not in San Ignacio. But it is the capital of the Cayo and the Cayo is wild country. There are ranches hidden from the roads and rivers that flow through the jungle and places you can only get to by horseback or by canoe.”

“Is it pretty?”

“It is very pretty. You haven’t told me what is your business there, Victor.”

“I’m looking for someone,” I say. “Someone who owes me money.”

“This is a long way for an American to come to collect on a debt.”

“It’s a hell of a debt.”

Back on the road, the highway starts kinking and slowly the landscape around the road changes to pine-covered hills and rocky pasture lands holding small villages. We pass a two-room schoolhouse, no windows or doors, old men sitting on the railing outside, listening to the lessons. Now and then we begin to pass boys on horseback. Canek shows me the turnoff to Spanish Lookout, where a Mennonite community farms the land in their straw hats and black buggies. He asks me if I want to see and I shake my head. Lancaster is only forty minutes from Philadelphia and I have never had the urge to visit the Pennsylvania Dutch there; I don’t need to see them in Belize.