Lost Girls

by George D. Shuman

  George knew that last night’s triple murder pushed year-to-date homicides beyond all previous years and there were still three months to go. It was a nightmare for Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller. She already had her hands full with corruption allegations and now the drug gang wars were drawing attention to Jamaican street crime. If there was one thing that would exacerbate Jamaica’s delicate economy it was a decline in tourism, a fact the World Bank had not failed to point out in a report to the United Nations. Crime would do the island irreparable harm, and the prime minister, in handling the economy, could not afford to lose the respect of cabinet members.

  Inspector Rolly King George knew that the prime minister would not want the story of this woman’s murder to bring more attention to Jamaican crime. Anything he could learn that would continue to distance the victim and her murderers from the island would be in the government’s own interest. He had already assured his own commissioner there would be no record of this woman on Jamaica—no hotel register, no flight record, no cruise ship, no entry through customs. And because of his assurance he had been allowed to delay the official report.

  The inspector’s cell phone rang and he answered it while getting to his feet. The old woman watched him head for the door, laying a slice of plum on her pink tongue with the blade of her knife.

  “Hello,” he said, breaking left down the corridor for an exit sign. “Rolly King George?” Dantzler said with his stiff German accent.

  The inspector found a door to the hospital’s courtyard and made for a park bench surrounded by peach-colored hibiscus. He took a seat and looked up to see a jet’s billowing vapor trail connecting the towers over both wings of the hospital. Air conditioners rattled in windows, dripping water that evaporated before it could pool on the yellow grass. He had been up since dawn and hadn’t eaten since last evening; his stomach growled.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I have a favor I wish to ask of you that will require a degree of faith on your part. I would like you to allow a friend of ours access to the body. If you agree to this, I will ask her to fly to Jamaica this afternoon.”

  Inspector George looked up at the sky and shook his head as if to clear it. The vapor trail between the towers was beginning to dissipate.

  “You said her. You are sending an investigator? A scientist?” “Not in the truest sense of the word, but let me ask you, Inspector George. Do you believe there are people who can commune with the dead?”

  15

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

  Sherry Moore sat with the telephone receiver on her lap. There was an overnight bag kept packed by her front door. She thought about it a long moment before she dialed. She had never asked Brigham to travel with her before, but her friend had seemed listless these last few months. She wondered if he wouldn’t appreciate a diversion, a variation in his routine.

  She picked up the receiver after a moment and dialed the number.

  “Hello?” he barked.

  “Mr. Brigham,” she said merrily. Sherry had always been uncomfortable calling the retired navy admiral by his first name, Garland.

  “Sherry,” he said pleasantly.

  “I heard from Interpol this morning and was thinking I might ask a favor since you don’t have classes tomorrow.”

  “Do tell,” he said. She could hear the sound of a television in the background.

  It wasn’t like Brigham to be watching television during the day. It wasn’t like him to be inside the house, for that matter. Even in winter he was constantly tinkering in his yard, burning leaves or playing with his log splitter, hauling cartloads of firewood behind his little tractor.

  He’d seemed bored lately. Bored of his university classes. Bored of his Thursday-morning breakfast club or whatever they called themselves. Bored or just in a rut, she thought. Sherry knew how easy it was to smile your way through life without ever letting on you were not well on the inside. She had managed to hide it for the better part of a year when she was coming apart at the seams over the death of John Payne.

  “Jamaica,” she said cheerily. “I’ll know in thirty minutes or so.”

  “A pleasant island as long as you stay out of the cities. We’ll be sunbathing, I take it? Somewhere by a tiki bar.”

  Sherry wondered if her neighbor hadn’t been into his bottle of port this early in the morning.

  “Here’s the deal,” Sherry said, wanting to keep it light. “We land in Kingston, take a quick cab to a hospital, I’m in and out of a morgue and we are on the way to Ocho Rio for a night on me.”

  “Sounds fabulous, can I think it over?”

  Brigham knew, of course, she was going with or without him. “It’s a very worthy cause, Mr. Brigham.”

  “I’m thinking,” he said.

  “You have thirty minutes and I’m calling a cab.”

  “I’m in,” he said abruptly.

  “Damned right, you’re in,” she huffed, “and Mr. Brigham?”

  “Sherry?” he answered.

  “Thank you for always being there.”

  Sherry replaced the receiver and sat in silence. She would never wish on anyone what she had gone through last winter—that darkest chapter of her life and a depression so prevalent that it had threatened to kill her. Only Brigham had saved her. Saved her life, for that matter.

  She would make it a point to keep an eye on her friend from now on. If he was slipping into a funk and needed some diversion, she intended to be there to do something about it. She intended to save him this time.

  16

  SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

  The sun was setting on the beach at Boca Chica. Carol Bishop sat cross-legged drawing circles in the wet sand. Robert, her husband, was in Colorado Springs, or so their daughter Theresa had said on the phone last evening. Bob was spending more and more time on the road, even though the CEO could easily have remained at the home office in Chicago.

  He was breaking down, she thought. He was tasking instead of enjoying the fruit of his labor. He was giving up on the life they had worked so long and hard to achieve. She thought about their Oak Park home, their dream home with the empty pink room where their younger daughter once slept. It wouldn’t be long before he gave up on her, too, she knew. It had been a month since she’d been back to the United States. Not that there was anything she could do about it. Jill was somewhere on this island. She couldn’t bring herself to leave Jill behind. Their lives, so fundamentally family-oriented before Jill had disappeared, had begun to dissolve before their eyes.

  A Dominican radio station playing salsa wafted across the hot beach. Somewhere in the background another radio station broadcast weather and news from nearby Jamaica.

  Carol was tanned nut-brown from a summer in the intense Caribbean sun. Her fingernails and toenails, once meticulously manicured, were clipped close, split and dirty with sand. She did little else these days but walk the city streets and marketplace where her daughter went missing and the shorelines along the beaches, in her threadbare sandals, showing flyers with her daughter’s picture, speaking to anyone who would give her the time of day.

  They called her madre de la muchacha perdida, the Lost Girl’s mother.

  It had been a season now since Jill disappeared. She would never forget that night. Not for as long as she lived.

  The captain had arranged a quiet exploration of the ship. The crew made subtle announcements over the hundreds of speakers onboard. Staff cabins were searched by officers, retail shops were checked to see if Jill Bishop’s guest card had been scanned, digital images were downloaded from cameras at embarkation ramps and restaurants and decks and casinos, assembled for future investigators to study. But three days later, not a trace of Jill remained beyond the morning she was filmed leaving the ship for Santo Domingo.

  The FBI boarded the ship in Miami, but a day and a night of cold questioning left Carol still wanting real answers. She boarded a plane back to Santo Domingo and had not left the island since.

  She
heard laughter but did not look up.

  Her daughter had been right here, right in this city of two million people, and no one saw her disappear? The answer was still here, she thought. Not back in the States or onboard the Constellation, where the charismatic Italian captain would be charming his current round of passengers.

  “…found in the waters off the eastern coast of Jamaica is reported to be that of a young Caucasian female. Sources inside the Jamaica Constabulary say that while the cause of death has not yet been determined, they are treating the case as a drowning. In other news, a gangland shooting in Spanish Town left…”

  Carol looked for the source of the broadcast and saw an Asian couple fussing over a boom box between toddling children.

  She got to her feet and looked around, unsure of what to do next. Then she started to run.

  17

  MORNE MANSINTE, HAITI

  Tam-Tam Boy brushed flies from cloudy eyes with gnarled fingers that stank of fish and rotten eggs. He dipped them into a rusty Campbell’s soup can, crouched over the body, and painted a yellow line down the center of the dead man’s forehead, then across his nose and mouth, bisecting his face. He dipped the fingers again and continued down the dead man’s chest across his stomach to his abdomen, where he painted a yellow circle around a black bullet hole. Tam-Tam Boy patted the ground until he found a sardine tin of coagulating blood and used it to make red fingertip dots inside the circle.

  The dead man was naked except for a pair of gray briefs. Tam-Tam Boy set down the tin, picked up one of the dead man’s hands, and threw back his head, eyes staring vacantly toward the stars. A man opposite Tam-Tam Boy beat on an old goatskin drum. Three hounsis began to rise and dance, shaking their bodies, white dresses billowing, scarves knotted on top of their heads. They stamped about barefoot in the sandy dirt around the fire, heads rolling from side to side. One shook a gourd-shaped rattle filled with dried corn.

  “Do you see him?” the woman sitting next to Tam-Tam Boy asked. “Is he going to come tonight?”

  She was wearing a green Nike sweat suit and red-and-white Reeboks. She wore cheap costume bangles on one wrist and a fake gold chain around her neck. The old houngan ignored her, placing one hand over the circle of red dots on the man’s stomach, pressing fingers into the bloated skin. Firelight reflected off his oily black face as he concentrated, eyes creamy white and opaque. His free hand clutched the hand of the dead man.

  “Pioche lukin atchu now,” Tam-Tam Boy said. “Him tell mi seh yuh look for a picture of a statue.”

  “Picture?”

  The old man cocked his head to one side, as if straining to hear. “Pioche is looking at a picture. A man in front of a statue,” he said slowly.

  The woman looked confused. The only picture of a statue she knew about was the one of Pioche’s father, Amaud. The statue was Christopher Columbus and it stood in the harbor of Port-au-Prince before being torn down and thrown in the harbor by mobs in 1987. But why would her dead husband care about a picture? Why now?”

  The woman in the sweat suit looked on helplessly. “Who did this, Tam-Tam Boy? Who killed my husband? Why did they desecrate his body?”

  “Di white ooman she call out to im. She is in a cage. She want im to take a message for er. She want im to help er escape. Pioche try to help her escape. Di ooman with Baron Samedi’s mark on her face.”

  Tam-Tam Boy removed the hand that was rubbing the dead man’s stomach and held it out.

  “Pioche gave the ooman some ting, but di one-eyed man is coming, di one-eyed man see im,” Tam-Tam Boy cried out in a strange high voice, “run, run.” The old man shook his head. “But Pioche not run. Him say lef di ooman alone, but di one-eyed man he point di gun and Pioche be shot dead.”

  Tam-Tam Boy shook his head violently, eyes growing wider; he squeezed the hand harder and tears formed as he spoke. “Now Pioche see a young girl, di child with di long white pin in er hair. She is standing in front of a blue shantee, wit bricks all around on di ground.”

  “It is our daughter, Yousy,” the woman in the Nike sweat suit said.

  The woman began to bawl, but Tam-Tam Boy suddenly put a finger to his ear. “Shhhhhh!” he silenced her, grabbing her arm and pointing across the fire. “Pioche want to talk to you!” he cried out. “Pioche is here!”

  One of the hounsis froze mid-dance, clutching her stomach exactly where Pioche had been shot. A moment later she stumbled forward, pivoting her hips until her torso was nearly horizontal with Pioche’s widow’s face, pointing down at the ground in front of her.

  Pioche’s widow looked up, tears running down her cheeks into the neck of her sweat suit.

  “I wait with Papa Ghede by the gates of the crossroads.” The voice of the hounsi was deep and sounded something like her husband, Pioche, had sounded in life—before he was shot dead and his body dumped in front her house in the village. Pioche’s widow looked up at the spirit of her undead husband and his eyes looked just like Pioche’s eyes looking back.

  “What mean you say about the picture, Pioche? What mean you say about your father, Amaud?” she cried out to the hounsi.

  “Me waiting by the crossroads.” The hounsi wagged a finger at her. “Me waiting with Papa Ghede.”

  The widow swooned.

  Tam-Tam Boy picked up a cloth bag and sprinkled salt over the dead man’s stomach. Then he spread his spindly arms and stood. “It be done for tonight,” he said.

  “What does he want?” The widow got to her feet, wiping dirt from her sweatpants, running to catch up to the old houngan. “What does it mean?”

  The old man turned. “Where is the statue picture?”

  “Over our bed. Pioche’s father, but he is long dead,” the widow said.

  “This is what Pioche wants you to see,” the houngan said, shaking his head and setting out across the path once more.

  Tam-Tam Boy nodded. “Look behind the picture and tell no one what you found, not for a year and a day or it be gone away from you.”

  He turned and looked at her.

  “Pioche will be back four more nights but then he must make the journey with Papa Ghede.”

  He held out a trembling hand, the distant firelight reflecting off his cloudy eyes.

  The widow fished gourds out of an old kerchief, pushed the money into the houngan’s hand, and blew her nose noisily, stuffing the kerchief back in a pocket. “Thank you.” She squeezed the old man’s hand. “Thank you.”

  Wild dogs slinked through shadows along the path between sloped shanties. The smell of dead animals mingled with sweat and a splash of Old Spice someone gave to the houngan as payment for a remedy. The houngan shuffled along the dusty path to a rickety shanty. Pioche’s widow went the opposite way, down a steep hill to a narrow dirt road.

  A young man and long-haired girl waited for her by a rusting white Toyota. Behind it a sprinkle of lights marked the village of Tiburon on the coast.

  It had been five days since her husband’s body had been tossed in front of their house. She remembered the morning the crowd gathered around her door, slowly parting for her to see the body in the street. Pioche lay on his back in the decaying palm fronds, flies swarming the slippery entrails protruding from his stomach. A small pencil and paper were stuffed in his mouth. A poppet in the shape of a man had been pinned on his chest. The casing of an expended bullet had been pushed into the fabric of the doll’s stomach.

  Hettie had kept her daughter in the house all that day. Policemen did not arrive until late the second day. They seemed nervous and wore ill-fitting uniforms. By then Hettie had brought Pioche into the house and removed the paper and pencil from his mouth, undressed him and cleaned the dirt and blood from his body.

  Neither of the policemen touched the body or examined the bullet wound closely; they didn’t seem to care about the pencil and paper that Hettie had taken from his mouth. They didn’t touch the voodoo doll with the bullet casing in its stomach. There would be no arrests. Pioche, like all Haitians it was presumed,
had invited his own death.

  Hettie waited another day before she got up the nerve to leave the house, before she could convince herself that whoever had done this to Pioche was not coming back to kill her or her daughter. That was when she asked her cousin’s boyfriend, Etienne, to put Pioche’s body in the back of his pickup truck and take it to the old houngan Tam-Tam Boy. Perhaps, she’d thought, Pioche’s body could be cleansed of the desecration and that way she might protect his soul after death and his body from being exhumed as a zombie.

  Hettie remembered the aid worker from World Freedom who came to see her that night, offering her condolences and asking if Hettie knew where Pioche had been working when he was killed. Everyone in the village knew that Pioche went away to work in the mountains, sometimes for days at a time. Work was very difficult to come by in Haiti, virtually impossible for men without skill, but men such as Pioche were sought out now and then to work in the remote mountain enclaves that belonged to the rich. There were many rich people in the mountains; the homes of former plantation owners had been turned into weekend retreats for the latest government officials and there were estates of textile manufacturers who operated sweatshops in Port-au-Prince and drug barons with their hidden airstrips and convoys of trucks that rumbled along dusty roads to meet the go-fast boats at night along the coast. Pioche was even called to the cities on occasion, to help with bridges and demolish buildings for the government.

  People in Haiti didn’t brag about where they worked or how much they earned. Talk was dangerous in Haiti. You went about life minding your own business and in doing so spared yourself and your neighbors from harm. Which was why Pioche had been adamant that Hettie not speak of what he had told her about the women he saw and why Hettie had kept her mouth shut even though the World Freedom aid worker seemed so insistent to know.