Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “I want all the women to go back to David in the morning and stay there among lots of other people. Don’t anyone go anywhere alone,” Clint suggested. “We have to find what’s behind it. We’re flying blind at this point. Murder is part of it already, so don’t get to feeling safe. You’re not.”

  “What makes you think that?” Mark asked.

  “They would have taken Maria and would be gone now. They wouldn’t be watching this house and us,” Judi answered. “They think all of us or one of us or any combination knows something.”

  “Somebody does,” Clint agreed. “The problem is that the person or persons with information don’t know what it is. We can spend awhile trying to figure what it could be.

  “For instance, we know it has something to do with Maria and very probably Pablo. If they’re hanging around because of that they’ll go to David when you do. If they stay they think I know something. I think only this character who went to the bruja is still here. He would have gotten Antoin away because we know he’s in it. He’ll probably know what it’s about. The others didn’t.”

  It would have to wait for morning. Clint asked a few questions, but didn’t learn much. The phone was working well enough that he could call out. He asked the police to check on the ones whose names he knew. They had already checked them to an extent. They were aliens who didn’t go to places tourists went and they stated they were tourists at entry into Panamá.

  Clint said they came as a group. He must have information about the smaller black. There was reason to believe that he may be the one who abducted Maria Garza. Five minutes later he knew the man was Quentin LeMonde from Haiti, but had a passport that said he was Denis Jaques from Jamaica, also. Both seemed to be legitimate passports. It was under investigation, but could be used as a means to detain him if and when that seemed advisable. There was an Aurelio Smith and an Antoin Fontaine. Antoin was a very large black man. Aurelio is not so large and is part black. Moreno.

  Samuel had called Sergio in Bocas and was advised that Clint was quite often used as an investigator by the Policia Nationál (a slight exaggeration. He had only worked with the local police at Bocas Town – who were Policia Nationál! It was true!) to great advantage. Samuel would cooperate to the extent it was legal.

  Okay. He knew the name(s) of the person who went to the bruja.

  “Ever hear of a Denis Jaques in Jamaica?” Clint asked the group. Cori said she might have met him. If he was a slender man who spoke wadi-wadi all the time. He had said something to Pablo at the fish market. Pablo said his name was Quent or something such, so it was probably somebody else.

  Clint said he also used the name Quentin LeMonde.

  “Do you remember anything at all he said to Pablo?”

  “It was wadi-wadi, so I can come pretty close. It was something about a woman named Claire and he was to shut up about her or something. Pablo said he had never said anything about her. He didn’t talk about something or other to anyone at any time. I went on to the stall for fish and they talked a minute. The fellow didn’t seem to be mad or anything. He just said it wasn’t a good idea to speak about people like Claire.

  “Oh, shit! I’m the one who’s supposed to know something, aren’t I?”

  “It’s more than possible,” Clint agreed. “If you’re the only one who met any of them. Maybe Pablo introduced some of you to others he met on the street or something?”

  “Well, he introduced Mark and me to someone named Frank and someone named Eugene,” Mike said. “Maria said some guy was a dangerous thief. I didn’t hear his name, but he hung around a bar in Haiti near the docks. He was a big black with dredlocks and a lot of gold chains.”

  “I heard the name. Claire Auber,” Ann said. “We were at that place where we rented the boat to take us to the reefs, Matt. You remember?”

  “The big black woman who spoke perfect French. I sort of remember her. She sat at a table in the back of that little bar on the docks all the time. I said hello to her one other time.”

  “What did she do there, do you know?” Clint asked.

  They both shrugged. They said she wore loud clothes and talked very Jamaican when she wasn’t speaking the good French. She spoke wadi-wadi, or patois, as they called it, and fairly good English. Matt said he thought she sold tourist trinkets. The higher end things. Everyone seemed to respect her.

  “Voodoo,” Judi said. “She was a witch woman and she sold amulets and ju-jus to people. I’ll bet Pablo was worried about a curse that she put on him for some reason.”

  “The bruja said someone in our party has a follow spell on them. She can sense it,” Lila offered. “She doesn’t know which one. It isn’t her spell.”

  “So. Was it Pablo ... no. She never met him and he was dead when you went there. It will be one or more of us. If we can find who we can work it to our advantage,” Clint said.

  “You believe in those things?” Mike asked.

  “That some of them work? Yes. That they’re magic, not really.”

  They talked awhile longer, then went to bed. Clint would stay on watch for two hours, then Matt, then Obilio, then Mark. Mike said he would take a shift, but Clint said he wanted him fresh in the morning.

  They got up at dawn – to find Judi and Ann weren’t in the house. Lila came to report that they were gone. She woke up and they weren’t there, she woke Cori and ran to the men’s room. There was no noise to wake her during the night. She hadn’t gone to sleep until late and had slept soundly. Cori came in, terrified. She hadn’t heard or seen anything.

  All of them spread out and looked for anything. Maria had managed to leave the plastic bits. Clint knew Judi could probably think of something.

  Mike found what looked like blood in several spots along what seemed to be an animal path toward the ravine. It wasn’t a lot and was hard to see in the dawn light, but was more obvious as the sun brightened. He felt he was being watched. It was eerie. He acted like he didn’t see anything and came back to the others.

  They went as a group. Obilio looked carefully at the blood and said it wasn’t human blood. He thought it was chicken blood because it smelled a little like chicken. Lila had killed a chicken last night and had it slow-cooking all night. They bled it into a jar and used the blood as flavoring and for the minerals in it in the soup when it was almost done.

  “I think Judi or Ann found a way to leave a trail,” Clint suggested. “She managed to grab that jar on the way out and will leave it in small dribbles along the path they took.

  “I wonder when and how whoever managed to get them out while we were watching!”

  “Very simple,” Obilio answered. “They used a spell or something in the water or any of many other things here that would make us sleep. Perhaps the monosleep. The brujas make it. You will sleep very soundly for perhaps half an hour or less and will not remember. She makes it because sometimes it is hard to sleep and we take a very little. When you are asleep you do not awaken unless there is something. After.”

  “Wouldn’t the women be asleep, too?” Mike asked.

  “Yes. It took two very large men to carry them. They left little to indicate they were here,” Lila offered.

  “No. Judi wasn’t asleep – or Ann. Someone left that trail. Someone was awake and alert enough to think of it and act,” Clint pointed out. “I don’t understand why she didn’t do something to wake us.”

  “You know, if Pop or one of us was threatened, they wouldn’t do anything that might get us killed,” Mike said. “Maybe point a gun at one or all of us and warn that anything would make them shoot.”

  “I agree,” Matt said. “Why weren’t they asleep? The rest of us were.”

  “Those two were already in the bedroom. We all had a glass of that corn drink before we went to bed. I think we can test it somehow and it will have the stuff in it,” Mark said. “Maybe Judi wasn’t supposed to be awake and it changed their plans a bit.”

  “Judi will find subtle ways to slow them down. We have to follow them fas
t!” Clint ordered. “They’re being clever. They might stay close because they don’t think we can follow.

  “Mike, you said you felt you were being watched by the path? Do you feel it now? At all?”

  Mike nodded. “I sort of little nagging feeling.”

  “Then you go toward the finca where Luis keeps the horses with Luis. The watching spell the bruja mentioned is probably on you. They’ll depend on it to tell them where all of us are. We can use it to our own advantage. Mark will stay here at the house, out of sight. They may come or send someone to find something here. Judi will know I’ll expect that and will be able to make them think something is here. That will separate one of them, if there are more than one. It could make it a bit hairy for Judi and Ann if there’s only one ... no. They’ll either be forced to come along or locked in a house or something.

  “If someone comes, stay out of sight and note where they go. Follow them if you can stay where they won’t know. They’ll lead us to the women if we haven’t found them before. If we find them one of us will come back here before we do anything if we have the time.

  “Cori will go with Mike and Luis. They can see that nothing happens to her ... and that she can’t be held in danger to keep us away. (She started to protest. That made her understand that Clint wanted no way for her to be held hostage.) We’ll all be packing. We might end up having to shoot our way out of something. If it comes to that, you shoot. This isn’t a game or a TV show.

  “Questions?”

  They all agreed. Mike, Cori and Luis headed down the mountain, Mark, Obilio and Matt went with Clint to a nearby place where the path couldn’t be seen from anywhere else and waited until they were a distance away before Mark went back to the house from behind.

  Clint was a hell of a lot more worried about Judi and Ann than he was about to let on.

  Kidnapped!

  Clint and Matt let Obilio do most of the tracking. The chicken blood trail ended after less than a kilometer when they found the jar under some bushes by the trail. There were spots about every 200 meters along the way. There was still a lot of the blood in the jar. That worried Clint. Was she caught or did she ditch the jar to keep from being caught?

  They were going in the general direction of where they followed before. Obilio stopped them after awhile and said he was pretty sure he knew where they were hiding. They could get to the place by either path. It was about three kilometers along. Those two paths were the only way in or out. They would come close to the other path, but across the river, about half a kilometer ahead. The river was shallow and easy to cross there, but the crosser would be very visible. He felt one of them should go to the other path in case one of them saw them coming on this one. They would probably try to take the other path out in that case. Clint thought for a minute, then told Obilio and Matt to follow this path and he would cross the river a little farther back and would get to the other path. Give him fifteen minutes, then go ahead as they were going.

  He went back to a spot where there were rocks all along in the river just behind a bend that would hide him from the lower ford. He was able to cross without a lot of trouble, then went on through the brambles and shrubs to find the path. He moved along it for about two and a half kilometers and was starting to go through a little patch of tall grass when he heard a voice asking what the hell they thought they were doing. They would never get away with this crap!

  It was Judi, acting scared and indignant. If there was one thing Clint knew about her, it was that she was NOT scared.

  A voice hissed for her to shut up or he would shut her up.

  Clint checked his Glock and started to move ahead slowly when a second male voice said something in French with a strong accent. He stepped back and waited. A short time later two men came in view with Ann and Judi between them. They were very carefully scanning ahead and were moving slowly when they came out of the grass and to the easier and more visible path. They speeded up. One had a gun. He would be Quentin or whatever. The other was a big black with dredlocks. He had a machete in his hand and a pistol stuck in his belt. Clint waited until they passed and stepped out on the path when they were about twenty feet ahead. He quietly said that if either of them moved one step or acted in a manner that he would think maybe, just perhaps, they were going for a weapon he would see that it was the last thing they ever did.

  Quentin spun and snapped a shot very close to Clint. That gave Judi an opportunity to step close and do a kick while moving toward him. He fell over backward, but held onto the pistol. The other one started to grab for the pistol in his belt. Clint dove forward and snapped a shot at him, then rolled and snapped one at Quentin. He yelled for Judi and Ann to head down that path the way they had come as fast as the could go. A bunch of people were coming from that direction.

  They bolted. Judi kicked the big black in the head as she passed, which made him swear when he dropped the pistol. Quentin jumped up and was trying to draw a bead on Clint, who shot a bit wildly over his head, but he dodged the shot from Quentin and had to turn to get another shot. Clint was about to shoot him when the black grabbed him around the ankle – which saved his life. He went down as Quentin put a shot right where his head was a split second before.

  Clint brought the butt of his pistol down on the black’s head and rolled to the side as Quentin fired again, nicking him slightly in the left arm. He kept rolling and went over the side of the path and sprung to his feet to dodge through the brush. Quentin fired at the sounds of his rush, but wasn’t very close. Judi and Ann would be beyond where they could go back after them and they didn’t know how many or who were coming toward them from that direction. Clint heard them running along the path away from the direction they came from. By the time he reached the path again they were gone.

  There was some blood (besides his), so he had hit one of them. He wasn’t about to go after them. They could hide and ambush him where he wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving.

  About ten minutes later Obilio came running along the path. He saw Clint and stopped, then was concerned because of the blood. Clint’s. Clint shook his head and said it wasn’t serious. He thought a minute. Obilio was quiet.

  “Maria wasn’t with them!” Clint exclaimed. “I’ll be alright. It’s just a small flesh wound.

  “Are the women alright?”

  “Only Judi and Ann are here, but they heard enough to know that Maria is being sent out of the country somehow and a man called Aurelio,” Obilio replied. “I think she is still close. They had no time to take her anywhere and would have been seen.”

  “Let’s check where they were. Maybe there’s something there that’ll tell us something.”

  They went back to a cave that was close to the intersection of the two paths. There were some clothes and food and three bedrolls.

  “They held Maria here,” Obilio said. “The bedroll is still here so she hasn’t been taken far. She is probably close and they did not want Judi or Ann to know.”

  “They didn’t count on me,” Judi said. “We were all supposed to be asleep with a potion they kept talking about that we would all have gotten. They said it never failed before. They couldn’t understand it.

  “I told them I know a little voodoo myself so it would automatically not work on me and Ann was right there beside me so I protected her by being close.

  “I don’t know why Ann and I didn’t get it. Everyone else there did, apparently. They do think maybe I have a little power. They believe in that power. Antoin is scared shitless of it.”

  “We figured it was in the chicha we had before we went to bed,” Matt replied. “You two were in the kitchen fixing the chicken.

  “Whose idea was the blood and why did you toss the jar?”

  “It was Judi’s idea. They were forcing us out, saying you were all helpless and they would shoot you one at the time if we gave them any trouble. Judi turned in the doorway and said something about turning off the stove. She went in and the jar was right there beside the stove. It didn’
t register that it’s a wood stove and isn’t turned off,” Ann said. “Antoin saw a couple of drops of the blood when he went back to check the trail behind and was telling Denis about it. I said none of us were bleeding. He was crazy! I got in their face and Judi threw the jar in the bushes when they were looking at me. They searched us and didn’t find anything or anywhere we had cut ourselves to leave a trail so they decided it was some wounded animal’s blood, but they watched our every step from then on.”

  “Antoin didn’t let Denis do anything to us. He said he wouldn’t be part of hurting women,” Judi said. “I think Maria will be alright if we can find her. I also think I could have gotten to Antoin with the voodoo bit if I had some time. Do the incantation thing and use some of that sleight of hand stuff I teach the kids at the school.”

  “Antoin didn’t want to be any part of this,” Ann agreed. “On the other hand, he talked about killing two men before he came to Panamá so they wouldn’t tell something.”

  “What did they want from Ann?” Clint asked.

  They shrugged. All they were asked was if they knew some people and what Ann and Cori had said to Claire. “They seemed to think we told her something about somebody because of Maria, but they didn’t say so directly. Ann sort of pieced that out from remarks on the way here and what they asked.”

  “Claire seems to be behind whatever it is,” Matt said.

  “One thing is still scary,” Judi warned. “I did hear them say that if Ann didn’t know anything it had to be Cori.”

  That was something to think about, certainly. Clint wondered if they would go after Cori now. They had to find Maria. She would be the key. Obilio had been right that the three bedrolls would mean she was still somewhere close. Clint remembered the caves not too far back along the second trail off of a sidepath. That could have been where they were headed when they had their little encounter. It was worth a try.

  Judi fixed his arm with a clean bandage she found in a small first aid kit. She and Ann would go with Obilio back to the house, then down to the farm where Luis had taken Cori and Mike. Matt and Clint would go to the caves.