“My belt buckle?” Amar said.

“And then what?”

“Boil the stuff. Then test it.”

“That takes a long time.”

“It’s the only way.”

“What about using the skin of a frog?” Erika Moll said. In the night, they heard the croaking of what seemed to be bullfrogs all around them.

Peter shook his head. “We don’t have the right kind here. What you’re hearing are bufos, large toads. They’re the size of your fist. Well, your old fist. They’re gray, not brightly colored. They do manufacture unpleasant skin toxins, they’re called bufotenins, not curare-based compounds of the Central American-”

“All right, for Christ’s sake!” Danny snapped.

“Just explaining…”

“We get the picture!”

Erika put her arm around Peter’s shoulder, nodded to Danny. He was still fussing with his nose, scratching at it with both hands, holding them curved as if they were little paws.

As if he were a mole.

“Cracking up?” Erika whispered fearfully.

Peter nodded.

Amar said, “To continue, the poison you recommend…”

Watching Danny, Peter said, “Bark scrapings of Strychnos toxifera tree, add oleander, sap not leaf, include Chondrodendron tomentosum if it’s available, boil the mixture for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Let’s get started,” Karen King said.

“We could find these plants a lot more easily in the morning light,” Jenny Linn said. “What’s the rush?”

“The rush,” Karen said, “is those halogen lamps back at the entrance. Right now Vin Drake could be heading here to kill us.” She swung the pack over her shoulders and tightened the straps. “So let’s get started.”

Chapter 13

Alapuna Road 29 October, 2:00 a.m.

In bright moonlight, they hadn’t much cover. The dense hau bush that clung to the cliff side stopped at the level of the dirt road, and it was only too easy to see the two cars driving along the narrow volcanic ridge. To the left, the land sloped down gently to agricultural fields. To the right, a steep cliff ended at crashing surf on the north shore of Oahu.

Alyson drove the first car, the Bentley convertible. Whenever she hesitated, Vin Drake waved her on from the second car, the BMW. They still had a distance to go to reach the washed-out bridge. Finally he could see it in the moonlight, cream-colored concrete from the 1920s; amazing it had lasted that long.

Alyson stopped and started to get out of the car. “No, no,” he said, waving her back in. “You have to dress it.”

“Dress it?”

“Yes. The students are all jammed into the Bentley, remember? They’re partying.” He was carrying a laundry bag full of clothes and other items he’d collected from what the students had left in the front office and in the Bentley parked at Nanigen: several phones, shorts, T-shirts, bathing suits, a towel, a couple of rolled-up issues of Nature and Science, a tablet computer-she started tossing the things at random around the car.

“No, no,” he said. “Alyson, please. We have to decide where everyone was sitting.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Very well, we still have to do it.”

“It’ll all get messed up when you push it over the cliff.”

“Alyson. We still have to do it.”

“But the police…the bodies will be missing. They won’t be in the car…”

“The water is full of rip currents. And sharks. The sea swallows the dead. That’s why we’re doing it this way, Alyson.”

“Okay, okay,” she answered wearily. “Who’s back rear?”

“Danny.”

She got out a sweater and a well-thumbed Conrad novel, Chance. “Are you sure, Vin? Seems like a setup.”

“Has his name in it.”

“All right. Who’s next to him?”

“Jenny. She feels sorry for him.”

A delicate printed scarf, a belt of white python, shoved back.

“Expensive. Isn’t that illegal?”

“Python? Just in California.”

Then Peter Jansen’s glasses, a pair he was always losing; Erika Moll’s bathing suit; and a pair of board shorts.

They went on to finish dressing the front seat, with Karen King driving. Then Vin Drake splashed lab alcohol over the back of the car, cracked the bottle, dropped it in the front, where it would catch under the dashboard.

“Don’t want to overdo it.” He looked around, at the fleecy clouds in dark blue, the white surf far below. “Beautiful night,” he said, shaking his head. “Beautiful world we live in.” He walked to the left side of the car and surveyed it from a distance. “There’s a downslope just ahead,” he said. “Drive a few yards until you hit the downslope, and then you can get out and we can push the rest.”

“Hey.” Alyson held up her hands. “I, uh…I don’t want to get in there again, Vin.”

“Don’t be silly. We’re talking ten feet of driving. Just ten feet.”

“But what if something-”

“Nothing will happen.”

“Why don’t you drive to the downslope, Vin?”

“Alyson.” A firm eye in the darkness. “I’m taller, I’d have to move the seat back, it would look suspicious in a police investigation.”

“But-”

“We agreed.” He opened the door for her. “Come on, now.”

She hesitated.

“We agreed, Alyson.”

She got behind the wheel, shivering despite the evening warmth.

“Now put up the top,” he said.

“The top? Why?” she asked.

“To keep everything in the car.”

She turned on the engine, pressed a button, and the Bentley’s top rose and folded over. Vin stood some distance away, and with his hand indicated for her to move the car forward. The car tilted downward, slid a few feet-she yelped-then it skidded to a stop.

“Okay, perfect,” Vin said, reaching into his pocket for the nitrile lab gloves. “Keep it there. In park, engine on.”

He came forward, and she started to get out. She didn’t hear the snapping sounds as he drew on the gloves. In a swift movement he slammed the door shut, locked it, reached in through the window, and grabbed her by the hair with both hands. He slammed her head against the metal of the windshield frame, where there was less padding. She started to scream but he pounded her head again and again. Then he banged her forehead on the steering wheel a few times to be sure. She was still conscious but that wouldn’t matter for long. He reached across her back and jerked the car into drive. It was awkward. He fell backward as the Bentley rolled past him, over the broken bridge, and then twisting, dropping six hundred feet to the river and ocean below.

Drake scrambled to his feet. He was too late to see the impact. Yet he heard it, the rending of metal against stone. The convertible had landed upside down, and he watched for a while, to see if there was any movement from beneath. One wheel spun loosely, but otherwise nothing. “Trust is everything, Alyson,” he said softly, and turned away, peeling off the gloves.

He had left his own car a hundred yards back, and the dirt path was rock-hard, dry, and would take no tire impressions. He got in his car and backed slowly down the narrow path-no mistakes now!-until he found a space wide enough to turn his car around. Then he headed south, back to Honolulu. It would be several days before the police discovered the fallen car, and he should probably hurry things along. He’d call in the morning to report that his graduate students were missing and he was worried about them. They’d been taken for a night on the town by the lovely Ms. Alyson Bender.

As for wider publicity, reaching back to Cambridge and Boston, Vin Drake had few fears. Hawaii would be helpful in this regard. Hawaii was a tourist destination, traditionally reluctant to report how many visitors died from rogue waves, strong surf, crumbling hiking trails, and the other attractions of the beautiful outdoors. The Cambridge story would play for a few days, particularly since several of the kids were attractive, but inevitably it would be replaced by juicier fare: Austrian princess dies in helicopter skiing on Mount Rainier; divers lost off Tasmania; Texas millionaire dies at Khumbu base camp; freak CinqueTerra accident; tourist eaten by giant Komodo lizard.