by Diane Capri
Her mother said Dominique had been blessed with the voice of an angel. She said Dominique would sing for the world someday.
Saint Louis took the usual route. The Impala rolled smoothly toward their home on the edge of the hill on the edge of the city where Dominique imagined she could see the entire countryside. Maybe even the whole world.
The Impala slowed when they approached the busiest intersection of the trip. She glanced out the windows to watch.
Saint Louis steered carefully around vendors selling fried bananas, art, and gasoline from cans. Tattered rags of assorted colors adorned dozens of Haitians making their way from one place to another on foot. Some were loaded down with purchases, but others simply looked and bought nothing.
Dominique was entranced by the colors and the action and the joy of being alone with her mother. She turned and climbed onto her knees and leaned into the seat back to watch through the back window while Saint Louis continued the Impala’s slow forward momentum.
She barely noticed when the Impala rolled through another intersection.
Then, at the next cross street, Dominique turned and slid back into her mother’s warmth. A tacky multicolored bus called a tap tap approached the stop sign to their right.
But instead of stopping, the tap tap accelerated rapidly.
Dominique gripped her mother’s hand and screamed as the tap tap charged toward them. Her mother squeezed her tight, one hand on Dominique’s head forcing her face against her mother’s chest, bracing against the coming collision.
She felt the big Impala swerve in a tight arc and stop hard, throwing them both forward before slamming them back into the seat at the same moment Dominique heard the tap tap screech its brakes.
Her mother loosened the grip on Dominique’s head. Dominique pulled away to see. The tap tap had narrowly missed slamming into the Impala, but only because Saint Louis had skillfully steered to a corner of the intersection and stopped just inches away from an enormous metal pole.
Dominique’s chest hurt and her breaths shortened, as if she was going to cry. But she didn’t. Her mother held her close enough that Dominique felt the rapid pounding of her mother’s heart, too.
Three men in straw hats, dark shirts, sunglasses, and jeans jumped out of the tap tap and ran full out toward the Impala. Saint Louis slammed into reverse, but the skinny one sprinted to the back and pointed a gun directly at the back window, blocking retreat.
Dominique knew who they were. Everyone in Haiti knew.
Tonton Moun Nui. Thugs. Killers. Fanatics who sought to take the place of the infamous Tonton Macoute and repeat their reign of terror.
The tonton carrying two machetes on his belt tried to open the front door. Locked. He tried her mother’s door behind Saint Louis. Locked.
The third man was blocked from Dominique’s view. He shouted something and stepped closer and pushed his hideous face close to the window and stared inside. Sunglasses covered his eyes. Deep scars marked both cheeks of his face where he’d been cut by a machete long ago. His wide mouth opened into an ugly grimace.
Dominique’s entire body began to quiver and she pressed herself closer to her mother.
She knew him. She’d seen photos of him many times in school and at home when Haitian children were warned to hide from him. He was evil, this man. Pure evil, the teachers said. He was the Tonton Moun Nui leader. Marcel Mesrine.
Dominique tried not to cry. But tears came anyway.
Mesrine pointed a large gun toward her mother’s window. “Unlock the door or we shoot.”
Dominique screamed and held on tighter. “Don’t do it, Mama. Don’t unlock it.”
“Open the door!” Mesrine shouted and slammed gun butt against the glass.
His angry face stared into the Impala as if he hated her mother. But how could that be? No one hated her mother. She was an angel. Everyone said so.
Sobs clogged Dominique’s throat and her runny nose blended with the tears she felt covering her face.
“The child is right. Don’t let them in,” Saint Louis said, without turning around. Dominique saw his eyes in the rear view mirror. His face showed his terror.
Her mother squeezed Dominique a little harder and said softly, “I have no choice.” Her fingers trembled as she unlocked the door.
Mesrine pointed his gun while the two tontons swung the Impala’s door open, grabbed her mother by the arms, and yanked her out of the Impala. They left the door standing open. Dominique scooted all the way to the opposite side of the Impala where the door remained closed and locked. She huddled into as small a space as possible.
Now Dominique’s mother struggled against the tontons, crying and screaming, too. Dominique could barely see through her sobs.
“Leave the girl alone!” Estelle begged, as the tontons dragged her to an old brown minivan Dominique had not noticed before, parked on the side of the road. “Leave the girl!”
A fourth tonton opened the back of the minivan from inside. The two who held Estelle’s arms lifted her and tossed her into the back like they’d toss a sack of grain. One of the tontons closed the minivan’s doors and slapped it hard with the palm of his hand.
Mesrine waited beside the Impala with his gun pointed at Dominique through the open passenger door until the tontons were seated in the minivan. He kicked the door closed with his boot. He rested the big gun’s barrel over his shoulder and sauntered to the passenger side of the minivan and ducked inside.
The minivan drove away leaving the tap tap where it stopped.
Dominique, bewildered, shaking, terrified, still crying and almost unable to breathe, huddled deep in the corner and stared out the windows until the minivan disappeared.
Gardenia perfume still scented the air inside the Impala.
Everything outside at the busy intersection continued as if nothing had happened. No vendor or customer so much as glanced toward the Impala. No surprise.
Kidnappings were common. Followed by a ransom demand or a murder, or sometimes both. People were numb to them now.
Even at nine years old, Dominique knew the police were corrupt. No one would help her mother because volunteering could get them killed.
“Dry your tears, Dominique. Your mother wants you to be brave,” Saint Louis said gently. He handed her a handful of tissues.
She did as she was told and waited as quietly as she could in the back seat while Saint Louis called her father.
Saint Louis drove Dominique home, where her father waited. He held her close while she cried and cried until she was exhausted.
After the Tonton Moun Nui took her mother, Dominique asked Saint Louis and her father and her teachers every day, “Why did they take my mother?” No one knew.
All Dominique had left were a child’s memories, her love of music, and a small bottle of expensive gardenia perfume.
And the constant, unrelenting terror that she would be the one Marcel Mesrine chose next.
CHAPTER 2
Tampa, Florida
Deja vu. Jordan Fox was cutting it too close again.
She glanced down at her speed and groaned. She shouldn’t be driving fifty on Bayshore Boulevard. Among other things, the area was notorious for speed traps. But she didn’t let up the pressure on the gas pedal.
“Drew,” she said aloud as if he was in the car and could actually hear her, “Don’t you dare be sitting there in the Afternoon Meeting already.”
Drew Hodges was her competitor at Channel 12, where they were both interning, competing for the next job that opened up at the station. And Drew was good. And he was never late.
She had ten minutes. Even at this speed, she might not make it. She pushed Hermes, her little electric blue subcompact, into fifth gear and dashed as fast as she dared, practically staring into the rear view mirror to watch for cops.
Jordan slowed down to pass through the green lights and kept a sharp watch for runners, roller bladers, bikers, and anyone else that used the linear park for a playground. Fortunately, t
here weren’t as many people out in the middle of the afternoon on a work day.
She and Drew both worked the nightside shift, 2:30 p.m. until 11:33 p.m., Thursday through Monday, which meant no rush hour traffic, one small benefit of the strange hours.
“You’re good, Drew. But I’m good, too. You’ll see.” She looked at the clock again. “Dammit!” She pressed the gas a little more. “It’s not enough to hurry, Jordan. You also have to start on time.”
She’d tried every day to start out early, but something always thwarted that plan. Usually, the something was her wheelchair-bound dad. Or, as he preferred, Nelson Fox on Wheels. The title was temporary, not permanent, but Nelson Fox on Wheels and a few other Series of Unfortunate Challenges meant Jordan Fox’s life was a lot more complicated than Drew’s.
Not that she resented Drew or her dad. That’s just the way it was.
She had a lot more at stake than Drew did, too. She had to use the Channel 12 archives to find out who killed her mother. So far, she’d made almost no progress. She’d win against Drew because she had to stay employed until she completed her mission. Simple as that.
“Not that I’m asking for special treatment,” she said. “I’ll beat you without any favors.”
If Jordan didn’t arrive before Drew, it was only one-degree-of-bad under her measuring system. If she wasn’t on time for the 2:30 p.m. Afternoon Meeting though, that was like two-degrees-of-bad. “Early enough” meant arriving in time to get a chair at the table. There were the chairs around the table, and then there were the second-string chairs against the wall. Only latecomers and people who had stopped caring sat there.
Somebody who had stopped caring. “Another thing on my long list that will never be me.”
She had to stop talking to herself, too. But not right now.
Three-degrees-of-bad was arriving after the Afternoon Meeting started. Never happened to her, but she’d seen her co-workers slink in late and it was impossible to do without scathing comments from the boss. No thank you.
Jordan hustled in from the sixth floor of the parking garage, across the visitor’s parking lot, and across both lanes of Page Street to the News Center. Although there was an elevator, she ran the stairs to the second floor because her dad’s stroke taught her never to take for granted that she was Jordan Fox on Two Capable Legs.
She checked the ginormous clock on the wall. Time was valuable at Channel 12. They sold it for millions of advertising dollars every day.
2:29:05 p.m. A small miracle.
Across the newsroom, she spied through the glass walls one empty chair at the conference table. In her imagination, she sprinted toward it in slow motion, knocking people down to get there like a sitcom-dream sequence. A point for each person down. In reality, she walked briskly and cheerfully to the last empty chair, which was almost as good.
Jordan Fox: cool, calm, and mostly collected on the outside. Jordan Fox: a frazzled, motivated speed demon on the inside. The image pushed a grin onto her mouth and she left it there for a moment since Patricia wasn’t looking.
Drew Hodges was already seated. Of course he was. Not only that, but he was one degree of even-better. He was leaning back in his chair smiling. Probably at life itself. Life had dealt him a stellar hand of cards. He had one card that allowed him to live closer to work. Another that made him suave and charming at all times. Or maybe those were two separate cards. Who knows what other wild cards Drew Hodges held up his sleeve?
“Life’s not about the cards you’re dealt,” she said. “It’s about how creatively you use your wildcards.”
“What did you say, Jordan?” Drew asked.
Heat rushed up her face like a bad sunburn. I told you to stop talking to yourself! “Nothing. Sorry.”
Drew laughed. Suave and charming. Yep. Drew held those cards in spades.
One of Jordan’s wildcards had recently put her at a rave for work-related circumstances. At the rave, there had been an…incident. Jordan wasn’t entirely sure whether the incident had helped or hurt her chances of getting a steady job at Channel 12. But, just in case it had hurt, Jordan needed to try very hard today, this week, this month, and beyond, to make up for it. No, she didn’t need to just make up for it—she needed to do something that would blow her bosses away.
Today was not the day, though.
In the Afternoon Meeting, all nightside reporters were expected to pitch a newsworthy story, and producers and photographers could make a pitch if they had something worth mentioning. They went around the table, and one by one, everyone suggested a story that could be covered today.
The only pitch she’d come up with was ordinary. A local woman who gave her preteen son whiskey and posted the picture on social media.
Compelling, but not personally creative.
After everyone pitched a story, Patricia Neal the Assignment Editor passed out the assignments, with guidance from Richard Grady the Assistant News Director. One by one, reporters left the room with their assignment to start making phone calls and taking action. Some reporters were assigned the story they pitched. Others got someone else’s pitch, or a story that had been on the docket already.
She shifted in her seat. This wasn’t going well. Only five people remained. Patricia and Richard, Drew, Drew’s role model and fearless leader, Antonio the reporter, and Jordan.
“Antonio,” Patricia said, “we’re gonna send you to talk to the fishermen who caught a 700-pound, nine-foot bull shark in the Gulf.”
“Nice,” Antonio responded, pushed his chair back and headed out.
“Drew, you can go with him,” Patricia said.
“Sweet.” Drew turned up the corners of his mouth, a twinkle in his eyes. He followed Antonio.
Were they trying to make Drew’s life even better? Jordan suspected Patricia of exactly that, but she’d hoped Richard could be objective. Now, as if Drew wasn’t cool enough—he’d be spending his day checking out a catch meant for the movies?
“Would you close the door?” Richard asked Drew on his way out.
Now it was just Jordan, Richard, and Patricia.
This couldn’t be good. Her mouth was dryer than desert air. She took a sip of water from her big yellow bottle to prepare her for whatever was coming next.
Richard pushed back from the table and crossed his legs. He looked relaxed. Comfortable. Maybe that was a good sign.
Another sip of water.
“We saved you for last today because we want to keep this assignment from becoming a three-ring circus,” Patricia said.
If Patricia was behind this, it couldn’t possibly be anything good. Jordan arched her eyebrows and wet her lips, prepared to be enthusiastic.
Richard added a decisive nod. “We want you to hit the road.”
“It’s not a secret,” Patricia said, in her tired, cheerless voice. “But if too many people find out, they’ll be knocking our doors down.” Patricia rolled her eyes at the very idea. Jordan suspected Patricia enjoyed complaining because she grouched about everything. “Photogs claiming this story needs two photographers….” Patricia spoke in slow motion, bobbing her head from side to side at each possibility. “Producers insisting we need a field producer. You get the idea. So keep this to yourself.”
“We’re confident you can handle the assignment alone,” Richard said, as if whatever he had confidence in Would Be So.
So far, no one had asked her whether she was interested in an assignment out of town. Which probably meant declining wasn’t an option. Jordan raised one eyebrow. “So what is it? Where am I going?”
“Jacksonville. To cover the national tour of Instant Pop Star auditions,” Richard said as if he’d just offered her an around-the-world luxury cruise on the Queen Mary. “One week from today. You’ll stay at a hotel, we’ll give you a stipend, and you’ll get a media pass to go backstage for all five days of the auditions. Interview local contestants and find someone interesting to focus on. Put together a human interest piece on that person. Or several people
. Depending on what you find.”
By sheer force of will, Jordan kept her mouth from curling into a snarl. Instant Pop Star was one of those reality shows where contestants sing and judges, combined with the public, decide on the best contestant. The winner gets a record deal or some cash. The show was wildly popular, a ratings juggernaut. Most of her friends loved it. But Jordan did not. Among other things, she didn’t like the cruel way they teased the bad singers who truly believed they had talent. The show was snarky and mean spirited. It reminded Jordan of throwing Christians to the lions.
Channel 12 covered the auditions because the show aired on their network. The plan was to promote Instant Pop Star, people would watch it and then stay tuned for the news.
This was nothing but a puff piece, all about ratings. Jordan didn’t want to be the “fluffy story girl.” If she started down that road, it would be a slog to get back to hard news.
But, of course, she couldn’t tell Richard and Patricia any of that because Instant Pop Star was their network’s top hit. And their network was both their family and their livelihood. Besides, their plan would work if she did the assignment well.
Jordan forced a smile and made her voice sound much more excited than she felt. “Thank you for the opportunity,” she said, avoiding commitment until she could figure out how to bow out without losing her job. “So, that starts in a week. What did you want me to work on today?”
“We have files on a couple dozen audition contestants,” Patricia said. “They’re all hoping we’ll feature them, of course. They sent performance samples and life stories and all that. So go through everything and familiarize yourself with the contestants for a few days to prepare for Jacksonville.”
Jordan’s head began to throb just thinking about spending days watching and listening to bad videos to choose the saddest story.
Being away from the station for a week, for whatever reason, wasn’t a good thing unless she returned with some truly incredible material. And Jordan was confident she would not get that kind of award-winning stuff at reality show auditions. If she was in Jacksonville, she’d be out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, and with the prep work this week, she’d be two weeks behind Drew. He’d have open access to everything exciting that happened for two full weeks. She couldn’t possibly compete with that at Instant Pop Star.