“I noticed the birds first, lots of birds, circling,” I said and went on to tell him about the boat and the body. The voice I was hearing inside my head was my voice, but it didn’t sound familiar. In a flat monotone, I described how weak she was, how, as I’d dragged her aboard Gorda, she’d felt so thin and frail and helpless. “In the end, it was really kind of miraculous that I saw her. I don’t know how much longer she would have lasted out there.”
He put his left hand on the wall next to my head and leaned in closer. “You say she did talk to you. Do you think she understands much English?”
We were close to the same height, our eyes on a level plane, but his shoulders seemed half again as broad as mine, and the muscles in his forearm carved ridges beneath the skin. If his intent was to be intimidating, it was working. “Some, but I’m not sure how much. I believe her when she says that her father is American. That’s probably how she learned the little English she does know, and if he’s here in South Florida like she thinks he is, I’m going to find him.”
“Do you have any idea how many times we hear that? That they have a relative in America?”
“I’m sure that’s true, but this case is different. This time you’ve got me to contend with, and I believe her.” I ducked under his arm, then turned to face him from the doorway of her room. “I found her out there, and the way I see it, that means I’ve got certain salvage rights.”
VI
When I went back into the room, a middle-aged black nurse was there with a machine, taking the child’s blood pressure.
“How’s she doing?”
“A lot better than I would have thought when they brought her in here this afternoon. She looked half dead.”
1 heard a slight Creole accent in her voice. “Are you Haitian?”
The woman smiled as she unwrapped the cuff from the girl’s arm. “That I am, but this little one doesn’t seem to want to talk to me, not even in Creole.”
When I tried to catch Solange’s eye, she deliberately looked away.
“It happens sometimes to kids when they’re traumatized,” I said. “I’d just like to sit with her for a while. They’re not going to kick me out, are they?”
“The other nurses told me you’re the one who found her. Family can stay after visiting hours, and I think you are about the closest thing to family this child’s got right now.”
After she left, I sat down on the yellow plastic chair and tried to make myself comfortable. There wasn’t a book or a magazine anywhere in sight, so I took one of the paper towels off her bedside table, got a pencil out of my shoulder bag, and began to sketch. I’d dabbled for years with water colors and charcoal sketches, having learned it from my mother, so these were all still-life scenes I had sketched in the past. First, I drew little pictures of Gorda, then a beach scene with palm trees and seabirds, a view of my cottage sitting next to the seawall back in Rio Vista.
I knew she was watching every move I made. Her bed was the one closest to the window and, as there was no patient in the other bed, the only sounds came from outside the room— occasional moans, bursts of laughter, or clicking footsteps beyond the walls of our space. I feared she would grow tired of it, just watching me draw, and fall asleep eventually, but there was an intelligence in those eyes that warned me not to underestimate her. It was as though she and I were engaged in a sort of standoff, neither of us willing to be the first to attempt to cross the space that separated us.
It was when I started to draw the picture of Abaco that I heard her shift her position in the bed, trying to get a better look at the drawing. I sketched my dog lying down, her muzzle between her front paws, her big eyes looking up with that funny, guilty look she gets when she has scattered the garbage all over my cottage to get at some chicken bones or is discovered with a squirrel that underestimated her speed.
“What is dog’s name?”
Her voice surprised me, not just because the sound of it broke the long silence, but also because it was strong and clear. She spoke in almost perfect, though accented, English. I found my breathing had gone shallow and sketchy the way it does when I’m nervous.
“Her name’s Abaco. After some islands in the Bahamas.” Red had continued with the tradition he’d started with my mother—after naming all three of their kids after islands, he had named his dog that way as well.
I reached for another paper towel to start a new drawing and set the sketch of the dog aside. I began sketching the Wind Dancer, a lovely little sailboat I had once sailed down in the Dry Tortugas in what often seemed like another life.
“I see Abaco?” She pronounced the dog’s name with the accent on the last syllable instead of the first. She made my dog sound like some Parisian show dog, instead of the strong-willed, incorrigible squirrel chaser she really was.
“Sure.” I handed her the drawing. She held it up in front of her face, and there was a small smile in her eyes, while the rest of her face held strong. “You can keep it if you like,” I said.
She slid the drawing under the covers then, hiding it carefully on the sheet next to her frail body. After she settled the covers back into place, she lifted them one last time to make sure the drawing was still there, then collapsed against the pillows.
“Have you ever had a dog?” I asked.
She shook her head, pressing her lips tightly together. “Mmmm, it’s probably different in Haiti, I guess. I’ve never been there. I’ve been to the Bahamas. Never to Haiti, though.”
“I been Bahamas.”
“Really?” I tried to sound barely interested, didn’t even look at her as I said it. I just shaded in the shadows on the hull of the sailboat on the napkin.
“Dogs bad, like Haiti. Not nice dog, like Abaco.”
1 looked up. “You saw dogs in the Bahamas?”
She nodded. “I work with Erzulie. Bad dog come many day.”
I decided to press her a little. “Erzulie, that was the woman in the boat with you?”
She nodded and slid her hand under the bedcovers, feeling for the drawing.
“How did you and Erzulie get in that small boat, Solange?” She didn’t speak for over a minute. I figured I’d blown it, I’d pushed her too hard, and she wasn’t going to talk to me anymore.
“Bad man hurt Erzulie.”
“Do you know the bad man’s name?”
She shook her head.
“He hurt her in the Bahamas?”
She shook her head again. “On boat.”
“Oh, you were on the boat that was going to take you to America? Were you coming in that small boat?”
“Big boat.”
“Like my boat, Gorda?"
“More big. Many people. No dog.”
“So you left the Bahamas in the big boat. What happened?”
“Night. Bad man hurt Erzulie.”
“So how did you get into the small boat?”
She shrugged and didn’t say anything more. Could it be she didn’t know how she got there? It was more likely she just didn’t want to or didn’t know how to tell me.
“Solange, I’d like to help you. I want to find your father. Do you know his name?”
“Papa.”
“No, what did other people call him? Other grown-ups?”
“Papa Blan.”
“Was he the one who taught you to speak English?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Papa—no Kreyol.”
I assumed that meant the father didn’t speak Creole, so he must not live in Haiti. He must only have been visiting. “What about your mother? Was she on the boat?”
She shrugged again.
“Do you know your mother’s name?”
She scrunched the features of her face into a tight little knot. “No maman."
“You don’t have a mother? Is she dead?”
Again, just the lifted shoulders, more questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
She pointed to herself. “Restavek,” she said very quietly, refusing to look at me.
“Restavek? ” I repeated the word and she nodded. “I don’t understand. I don’t speak Creole. Can you say that in English?”
She shook her head and then yawned, her wide mouth showing several gaps where teeth should have been. She slid down, pulled the covers up tight under her chin, and closed her eyes.
“Okay, you sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe we can talk some more then.”
At the nurses’ station, I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me. The nice Haitian nurse was not around, and the busty young woman at the desk was far more interested in her manicure than in helping me. When I finally succeeded in getting her to acknowledge my presence, she told me with a flip of her blond hair that I was not next of kin, and therefore she could not speak to me about the girl’s medical condition.
“She has no next of kin,” I said. “Does that mean nobody gets to find out how she’s doing?”
The young woman stood up and tugged at the hem of her uniform. The pink polyester was straining at the seams to contain the bust that was perched at an unnatural height, somewhere above her armpits. Her name tag said “Jenna.”
“I have orders from Dr. Louie not to talk to anyone about her, and I have to do whatever Dr. Louie says.”
I wondered how far Dr. Louie took that willingness of hers.
I stopped off in the lobby at the McDonald’s to grab a burger and fries for the ride home. So many hospitals I’d visited lately had fast-food franchises right on the premises, so I no longer found it ironic to be eating heart-clogging grease a few floors beneath the cardiac surgery suites. I couldn’t resist the smell and had just taken a mouthful of hot french fries out of the to-go bag when a perfectly coifed young Hispanic woman approached me just outside the hospital entrance, identified herself as Nina Vidal from Channel 7 News, and asked if I was the one who had found the little girl. I wondered for a minute how she had recognized me, then realized that the salt-stained deck shoes and the Sullivan Towing and Salvage baseball cap were pretty good clues. I acknowledged that I was the one, and I tried to continue on around her. She stepped into my path again.
“We’ll be doing a live feed from here when we go on air at eleven,” she said as she pointed at the van with the long, extended antenna mast. “Would you be willing to wait around a few minutes and answer some questions for our viewers?”
I swallowed the ball of starch in my cheek. “Sorry. I’m headed home to bed. It’s been a long day.”
She continued to follow me out toward the parking area. “What do you know about this child? Can you confirm that she was not alone in the boat? We understand there was a dead woman. Do you know her identity? Do you know if she’s connected in any way to the other victims?”
I stopped and turned to face her. I was about to tell Helmet Hair what I thought she could do with her extended mast, but I reconsidered. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only know that there’s a sick, scared little girl up there.” I pointed to the upper reaches of the hospital. “Just tell your viewers that she’s a really sweet kid, she’s got the face of an angel, and our government shouldn’t send her back to the streets of Haiti. Okay?”
She rolled her eyes and murmured something under her breath as she headed back to the van.
There was nothing left in the bag but some greasy wrappers by the time I pulled my old Jeep into the drive at the Larsen estate. The canvas top on my vehicle was probably the third or fourth one she’d had since her original owners bought her in 1972, but the wind and Florida sun had done their damage, and the back windows always came loose as I drove. An old boyfriend had nicknamed her Lightnin’ after watching me try to accelerate and merge onto 1-95. Thunder might have been more appropriate, though, given the flapping canvas and the engine’s tractorlike rumble. Coming to a stop and shutting her down created a very sudden silence.
I just sat there a minute, too tired to climb out, enjoying the emerging night sounds of insects and far-off traffic. I’d seen the dark brown sedan that was parked on the street in front of the house, and I was certain I recognized the figure sitting in the front seat. I didn’t want to talk to him. Not tonight. When I finally climbed out of Lightnin’, the sedan’s front door swung open and scraped to a stop on the cement sidewalk.
“Miss Sullivan.” Collazo made no other movement behind the dark glass. “I need to speak to you for a moment.”
I walked over to the car and bent down to speak to him through the open driver’s-side window. “It’s late and I’m really tired, Detective.” The drops of sweat on his face sparkled in the light from the street lamps.
“Me too,” he said. He motioned with his head. “Get in.”
He wasn’t a bad guy, Collazo, but he had the social graces of a Neanderthal. As I walked around the car, I wondered if he had any kind of life outside his job. I slid into the passenger’s seat and rolled down the window. Being in a hot, closed car with Detective Collazo was enough to make me revisit my Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
“You went to the hospital.”
“Uh-huh.” Tired as I was, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Maybe it was even a little perverse of me, but I found it impossible to be cooperative with this man.
“The girl’s refusing to talk,” he said.
“Yeah, I heard you were there with an interpreter this afternoon. You know, I wouldn’t say she’s refusing, exactly. It happens when you’ve been through something like this. She’s just sort of timed out for a while.” I didn’t want to lie to him, but I didn’t want to tell him that she had spoken to me at the hospital, either. She needed her rest. There would be time for her to tell more, later, when she was stronger.
Collazo stared out the window at the Larsens’ dark, hulking house and didn’t speak for almost a minute. I was about to climb out of the car when he finally said, without turning his head to face me, “She was the fourth one.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. “The fourth what?”
He didn’t answer me for a long time, and I thought it was another one of his waiting games. When he started speaking, his face was still turned away from me, and I had to sit forward on the seat to hear his voice.
“The first one was found on the beach at Pompano just south of Hillsboro Inlet about three weeks ago. A woman. Witness in one of the condos along that stretch said he had seen lots of people on the beach around three in the morning when, as he put it, he ‘got up to take a leak.’ They were swimming in the surf line, he said. Hundreds of them. Boat must have dropped them off just offshore. Beach clean-up crew found her in the surf line at sunrise.” He turned and looked straight at me. “Severe head trauma. Medical report said it was probably a machete—nearly cleaved her skull clean in half.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with—”
He ignored my question and continued talking. “Then tonight, this Border Patrol guy, Elliot, tells me the same thing happened in the Keys last week. Down near Marathon. Some smugglers dropped off a load of Haitians in the early-morning hours, and they found one man walking around, hole in his head so big his brains were hanging out. He collapsed on US-1 and died in the hospital down there. Found the other one on the beach the same night. A man. Monroe County medical examiner says it was the same thing— massive head injuries.”
“I haven’t seen anything about this in the papers.”
“They aren’t releasing any of the details to the public. For some reason, the press hasn’t put it together yet. They will with this one, though. They will with number four.”
1 thought about what Helmut Hair – the woman reporter had said to me at the hospital. She asked me about the other victims. Now that made sense. “I think they already have, Collazo.”
“We’re putting together a task force made up of FLPD, INS, and the FBI. They’re calling it the Deceased Alien Response Team—DART.”
“Sounds like alphabet soup.”
“The child. She may be able to tell us something, but she seems frightened by author
ity figures. My Haitian translator tells me that’s typical for their culture. Elliot says they can’t get any of the Haitians to talk about the smugglers. Ever since Papa Doc and the Tonton Macoutes, they don’t think much of police or authorities.”
“I’m impressed, Collazo. You seem to know quite a bit about Haiti.”
Again, it was as though I had not even spoken. “We are operating on the assumption that they were aboard the boat that sank up in Deerfield, and they were put off into the smaller boat.”
“There’s a problem with that theory. The timing doesn’t work. The Gulf Stream runs at two to three knots. That boat should have been much farther north if they were dropped off thirty-six hours before they were found.”
“There were no other boats in the area.”
“None that you know of,” I said. I’d heard estimates that the authorities stopped only ten to twenty percent of the illegal immigrants flooding into Florida.
“We want you to get close to the child,” he said. “See if you can get her to talk, find out what she knows. Anything at all about the people behind this operation and their location in the Bahamas.”
I jumped at the mention of the islands. Tired as I was, I suddenly wondered if they had somehow listened in on my conversation with Solange. “Why do you say the Bahamas?”
“The plastic water bottles and the food cans in the boat with the dead woman. The labels were all Bahamian. Get her to tell us something that will indicate where in the Bahamas.”
“I don’t know, Collazo, she’s just a little kid. I don’t think she knows anything.” I wanted to protect her from this mess. She had talked about the “bad man,” and I was fairly certain she would recognize him if she saw him again.
“It doesn’t really matter what you think, Sullivan. What really matters is what the killer thinks.”
That tightness in my chest returned. I felt so stupid. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I slid over on the seat and reached for the car door. “Solange, they might try—”
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