CHAPTER 2
THE TROPICAL GARDENS WERE PLUSH AND GREEN AS SIDNEY AND HER crew walked along the resort’s serpentine paths that wound toward the beach.
Once past the pool, her tennis shoes sank into the sand of Sugar Beach.
Around her, the twin peaks sprouted into the sky.
On her right and to the north, Petit Piton; on her left and to the south, Gros Piton.
Laid between the summits was a two-hundred-yard stretch of sugar-white sand that glistened under the hot sun.
Closer toward the water, the sand was darker, where the surf washed over it and bathed it into wet caramel.
“Ms. Ryan?” a young Caribbean man asked as he approached.
“Sidney.” She reached out and shook his hand.
“Darnell. I’ll be guiding you and your crew today. Are you ready?”
Sidney nodded. She looked back to her camera guys and pointed to the Pitons.
“Get these,” she said to her crew. “A few stills from the base to the peak, with a clouded sky above. Maybe time-lapse it to get a tropical storm moving through. Might be a good promo, beautiful scenery one minute and a ferocious storm the next. Aerials would work well, if we can budget it.” She looked back to Darnell. “Is the hike difficult?”
“To the summit?” He smiled. His teeth were broad and white. “Yeh, man. To the Soufriere Bluff? Easy.”
“Easy?” Sidney asked.
“No problem.” Darnell pointed to Sidney’s bicep, then flexed his own and let out a jovial laugh. “Trust me. No problem.”
Thirty minutes later, they had completed the necessary paperwork and signed the waivers required to partake in a guided hike up Gros Piton.
The trip to the summit was an all-day excursion taking more than four hours.
To the bluff where Julian Crist was killed required thirty minutes of walking along a narrow path flanked by heavy foliage, with occasional views of Pitons Bay to the north and the Jalousie Plantation to the east.
Sidney and her crew were halfway to the bluff when they came to a staircase made from boulders and flanked by a makeshift bamboo railing.
The structure had been reinforced over the years with additional balustrades and a few odd rocks.
The man-made arrangement tackled a steep gorge that would otherwise be too challenging to traverse.
“Darnell,” Sidney said as they approached the Stone Age staircase. “Has this portion of the hike changed over the years?”
“No. Same now as it’s always been.”
“So, ten years ago, this was the same staircase?”
“Yeh, man. Same is same.”
Sidney directed her crew. “Get this from bottom to top, and then top to bottom. Capture a first-person account of climbing up the staircase, no one else in the frame. And time me on the way up. Take a few more runs and get an average of how long it takes to walk it, jog it, and sprint it.”
Sidney followed Darnell up the boulders, the first vigorous portion of the day’s hike. With temperatures in the low nineties and 100 percent humidity, her tank top was soaked by the time she was halfway up the staircase.
A healthy thirty-six-year-old woman in good physical shape, Sidney considered that she was ten years older now than Grace had been when she supposedly made this journey.
Sidney needed the aid of the bamboo railing to make it to the top.
The steep incline toward the peak required her to grab the bamboo with both hands, one on each side, to hoist herself to the top.
Once there, she surveyed the landing and then headed back down.
At the foot of the stairs, she grabbed a tripod from one of the crewmembers and extended it to its full length, placed it over her shoulder, and repeated her climb up the boulders with only one hand available to grab the bamboo.
When Sidney was satisfied with her test runs, she found Darnell sitting in the shade of a Lansan. “How much farther?”
“Not much,” Darnell said, pushing himself away from the tree’s trunk. “A few switchbacks.”
She followed Darnell along the narrow dirt path until they made one last turn. Then the foliage cleared and a bluff came into view—smooth beige granite that mirrored the afternoon sun. Sidney walked over to it, already visualizing how she could present this majestic and tragic scene.
“Is this it?” she asked as she walked carefully onto the bluff.
“Yeh, man.” Darnell was more daring, walking fearlessly to the edge. “He went over right here. All the way down to the water.” He pointed over the ledge, then smacked his palms together.
Sidney stopped a few feet from the edge, bent at the waist, and took a hesitant glance over the threshold.
Her stomach rose into her throat. It was a long way down.
She looked behind her. The camera crew was just now arriving after capturing the staircase from the angles she requested.
Sidney walked over to Leslie Martin, her producing partner, turned back to look at the clearing and the bluff and the pristine view of Pitons Bay sparkling with afternoon sun. She put her arms out wide.
“I need a full shot of this view. A first-person perspective, coming around the bend and witnessing the bluff and the clearing and the bay. We’ll need to get a shot at sunset as well, with the sun in the backdrop and long shadows creeping toward the camera. That’s about the time he was killed.”
“I can see the promo,” Leslie said. “Gorgeous, but eerie.”
Sidney nodded. “Get a blanket up here, too. With a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Low shot, okay? Ground level, with the glasses in the foreground and the setting sun behind them.”
“You’re a genius. I love it,” Leslie said.
“It was a long time ago,” Darnell interrupted. “When that boy went over the edge. What is the interest so many years later?”
“Research.”
“For a book?”
“No, a film.”
Darnell’s bright smile appeared again. “A movie?”
“Documentary.”
Sidney walked back onto the bluff as her camera crew prepared to film the area where Julian Crist was killed. She enjoyed a moment of solitude as she looked out over the ocean, and then down to Sugar Beach, where vacationers strolled hand in hand, their footsteps melting in the sand.
“Okay, St. Lucia. Tell me your story.”