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protect the house from the evil spirits thattook 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 howthey’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.” Hetapped 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