Titan Trilogy 3.5-Black Soul

by T. J. Brearton

  “Yeah, okay . . .” William said.

  Hosea squinted against the smoke. “Some Jamaicans, like me, follow the Bobo Shanti Order. That’s the Rastafarianism I believe. The teachings of Emmanuel Charles Edward the Seventh. Haile Selassie is God and Edward is the black Christ in the flesh. That’s what the mayor believes.”

  “The mayor of Roatán?”

  “Yah, mon. That’s Clive Booth.”

  William made a mental note. Hosea seemed to stare at him, his eyes glassy and reddened. William wanted to check on the girl in the hospital, but he decided to give it a few more minutes first.

  Hosea said, “The English-speaking Afro-Antillean in the Bay Islands still don’t know who he is or where he belong. You get me?”

  “Sure.”

  “We gonna lose the language, lose the culture, lose everything. Garifuna can trace their roots to West Africa. We’re the people that fought along with the British and Paya against the Spanish, mon.”

  William didn’t know much about this history. When Hosea offered the joint a second time, William took it. The smoke was sweet and powerful and he had to hold against a coughing fit. Once, neuroscience had been his discipline. Then law enforcement. Now he was just a civilian, traveling the world in a bid for real justice, getting high. His life was insane.

  He handed back the smoldering spliff.

  “Well, these guys I saw tonight, they did look Rastafarian. They were carrying large bags. And they seemed to be working for the woman we followed. The one in the tan car.”

  Hosea took another crackling pull off the huge joint. He held his breath, talking in a funny voice. “Sure, mon. We’ll take the work where we can get it. But thems not the ones you need to be watching for. That woman, she probably works with them, they be easy with her. Other ones on the island getting work like that, they not so easy.”

  “Who do you mean?” He felt dizzy. “What other ones on the island?”

  Hosea looked dazed, off in another world, but he answered.

  “Gangs.”

  “Gangs on the island? I thought the gangs kept to the mainland.”

  “Calle Eighteen,” Hosea mumbled. He stared past William into the distance.

  “What do you mean? Calle Eighteen? I thought they were a Los Angeles thing. Listen, maybe you can help me. Help me find out who that woman is . . .”

  Hosea’s eyes wandered back to William, misty and red. “I can’t help you, mon.” He got in the taxi and started it up.

  “Hey,” William tried, but Hosea quickly backed out. William knocked on the passenger side and Hosea rolled down the window. He had a thousand-yard stare now; he had gone somewhere else.

  “What about the taxi? I need to get the bill from you, I can pay for it.”

  “I don’t need anything else from you.”

  It was like the weed had made him paranoid, or something had spooked him.

  Hosea drove out of the lot. William watched the taillights fade down the road. The lights had two trails that lagged behind the vehicle. William blinked and shook his head.

  He headed back into the hospital, found the waiting room, his thoughts filled with Ethiopian Christianity, Rastafarianism, Calle 18 and whatever the hell he had just smoked. It felt like the most powerful ganja he’d ever come across. He sat down heavily in one of the seats. There was an American couple sitting nearby, retirement aged, the woman flipping through a magazine. The man looked at William uneasily.

  The nurse came around a moment later, smiling when she saw William. “She gonna be okay.” She held out a clipboard. “I need you to fill out this paperwork.”

  “She needs to have an SOEC done,” he blurted. He was not law enforcement here, and he couldn’t just order a sexual assault kit, but the hospital could do one at their discretion. And if so, they would probably contact the police, depending.

  The nurse crouched down beside him. She smelled like citrus and spoke in a low voice. “Whatever happened, this girl has not been raped.” She searched his eyes, his face. “You got there just in time.”

  “Is she awake? Is she talking?”

  “No. She sleeping. We gonna keep her overnight.”

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll be back in the morning.” He gave her back the paperwork and walked out before the nurse could protest.

  It might not have been the best decision, but his mind was reeling. He stepped outside into the night and remembered his taxi was gone. He had no way back to the resort, five miles away.

  He’d spent almost all the cash he was carrying.

  He called Mateo.

  * * *

  William didn’t talk as Mateo drove them west to the resort, and Mateo didn’t ask any questions.

  Still, Mateo’s presence reminded him of Deon, and the possibility of locals who retrieved sunken contraband from the ocean floor.

  When they arrived, William said one thing. “I need my own vehicle. A motorcycle, maybe.”

  Mateo said he would take care of it.

  It was almost midnight and William felt exhausted. He could barely recall the last time he’d slept in a bed. Two days ago? Longer?

  He’d also forgotten that Cohen had given them a room with one queen-sized bed. Hanna was on it, watching TV, waiting for him. William dropped his bag on the floor and laid down on one of the couches. Hanna looking at him expectantly.

  “Sorry,” was all he could manage. The image of the young woman tied to the bed came into his mind. He remembered picking her up, carrying her outside. Nothing else mattered right now. He fell asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hanna woke him up. He looked at his watch — not quite seven in the morning.

  She was pointing at something, upset. “What’s going on?”

  He got up, his head heavy. She stood in front of him, in between the couches.

  “You come in last night, you don’t talk to me, and you pass out.”

  He looked where she was pointing. His backpack lay on the floor, unzipped, contents partly slipping out. He’d been careless. He wondered how long his bag had been like that. It almost looked like someone had gone through it.

  There was a knock on the door, interrupting them. Hanna glared at William, then strode to the door and opened it.

  She had a brief exchange with Mateo, looking over her shoulder into the room. Then she took something from him and closed the door. She crossed back to William and tossed it.

  A set of keys landed in a jangle next to him on the couch. An ignition key and a spare.

  “Your motorcycle,” she said. “That ought to mix well with the drinking.”

  He rubbed his eyes, head still throbbing. His muscles felt strained. He looked up at her, vision blurry. “Hanna, I haven’t been drinking. I haven’t had a drink in more than three years.”

  “Sterling wants to see us this morning.”

  “When?” He stood up, looking around, trying to get his bearings. He needed a shower. What the hell had happened to his bag? Had he left his backpack unattended?

  “Seven thirty,” she said.

  “Do we have the storage drive?”

  “I put in in the safe. In the closet.”

  “I’ve got to call the hospital.” He found his duffel and began riffling through it for clean clothes.

  “Why?”

  “I saw one of Rene’s friends last night. Or, at least, someone from that scuba-diving picture.”

  “What? Where? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He got off the ferry. He was with another girl. Rene’s age. I followed them.”

  “What do you mean you followed them? Mateo was there when I got back from the dive. You took a cab?”

  He nodded. He located fresh underwear, pants, a T-shirt. He needed to get some more warm-weather clothes. His one pair of shorts was covered in mud and grass stains from hiding in the woods next to the home in First Bight.

  The breeze coming in off the balcony felt nice. But within an hour it would be sweltering hot again. He didn’t
know if he could take another day in the heat. He felt ill, stupid for smoking whatever he had.

  And he’d just about nodded off in the back of the taxi last night. Had Hosea gone through his bag while he was sleeping? William thought he would have woken up, for sure.

  Hanna was staring at him.

  He explained how he’d seen the pretty woman with the two Rastafarians at the open air café where they’d had lunch. How he’d seen her again as they got off the ferry, carrying big bags.

  “Like what?” Hanna asked. “Guns?”

  “I don’t think so. The bags looked relatively light, and that would be too out in the open, even for here. Then the kid showed up, from the picture, and a girl with him. So I followed them to the house in First Bight. There was a guy there, late fifties. He tied the girl up.”

  Hanna listened intently.

  “I lost the woman and the kid once we got there — they left. But the girl was inside. She was drugged . . .”

  William trailed off. He was silent for a moment, holding his clothes, kneeling on the floor. “I took her out of there, and brought her to the hospital.”

  Hanna got off the bed and moved to where the MacBook was opened on the kitchen counter. She clicked the keyboard then picked up her cell phone.

  “I looked at houses in First Bight,” she said, dialing.

  “And?”

  “And, yeah, it’s a rental property. Island Dream Real Estate. No way of finding out who’s renting it — they don’t list that sort of thing on their site. But I’ve got a number for the realtor, and an address. They’re on the mainland, in Trujillo.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The hospital.”

  Hanna put the phone to her ear. He listened as she inquired about a patient, giving the description for a young American woman who had been brought there between ten p.m. and eleven p.m. the night before. Then she waited, looking at William.

  “Really?” Hanna said. “Alright. Thank you.” She hung up. “She’s not there. No paperwork on any such woman.”

  A silence developed in the room and Hanna’s eyes drifted to William’s backpack on the floor, pockets open. He knew she was wondering what else he’d been doing — or ingesting — the night before. But she had to believe him. Why would he lie? Because of Russia? Because she thought he had something to prove?

  “She must’ve checked herself out,” he said. “Or, just left. They’re pretty low-key over there. It’s not like hospitals in the States . . .”

  “I know what the hospitals here are like. She still would’ve had to be admitted. You brought her in.”

  He hung his head for a moment. He needed food. Something. He realized how it all looked.

  “Will,” she said, “this thing you’re doing, this running and gunning . . .”

  He rose to his feet. “What was I supposed to do? I saw a kid from the photo! I followed them, just like I should have.”

  He could sense her picking it all apart.

  “When I got there,” he said, “this guy was about to rape the girl.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  His mouth dropped open. “What is it with you, huh? I just don’t understand this skepticism. She was on the fucking bed, okay, with her legs spread open, her arms tied. Drugged. He came out of the wardrobe in a fucking silk robe. Ready to have his way. I stopped it.”

  She looked back at him levelly.

  “William,” she said, “we had to leave Russia because of you. Yes, you got Klara out of there. And that’s good, and they can use that. But we were headed in that same direction. I worked for the Justice Department and wrote the manual for the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. You know it takes time. You have to be patient. We got here and a young woman has been missing for ten days. Ten days, William. There’s obviously something going on here, I can see that, you can see that. But, we expected it. And if we want to do something about it, we have to be smart. Are you sure that was the kid from the photo? Okay, maybe it was. And maybe you’re right — this guy was about to rape her. But where is she now? No record of her at the hospital. Will, I don’t mean to question you. But the risks you take . . .”

  “What shift was the nurse on? Just came on this morning?” He felt livid, cornered. He couldn’t wrap his mind around Hanna’s opposition. Some of what she was saying hit home, but the rest just didn’t gel.

  “I don’t know,” she said about the nurse. “Maybe.”

  He took a step toward her. “Smell me. Do I smell like alcohol?”

  She stayed where she was. After a moment, she lowered her gaze and looked away. “When we started this thing . . .”

  “What?”

  Her eyes snapped back at the edge in his tone. “I really thought you were something. We were something. That we were going to do something no one else could. All the things people dream about, the desire to make a difference . . .”

  He threw up his hands, his voice rising. “And you’re still trapped by all these rules, Hanna! Can’t you get it? It’s like you’re still working for the Justice Department. You haven’t changed. You’re still running the same bureaucratic bullshit.”

  “You’re right, I’m not a vigilante . . .”

  “Please. Give me a break. We’re not talking about vigilantism.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  He was on fire now, shower forgotten, fatigue vanished. “We’re talking about taking out the fucking garbage. And if that means splitting some motherfucker’s head open who is exploiting women, blowing his fucking face off, then that’s what it means. You know what I want? I want to walk from house to house with a fucking shotgun. I want a device in my hand that tells me if the person inside is a scumbag, then I want to go into that house and end their life.”

  His words stunned them both. In the ensuing silence, he had a chance to absorb what he’d just said.

  The pity in her eyes was unbearable. He backed up until he hit the wall, then he slid down on his ass. He dropped his head between his knees.

  He wasn’t breathing.

  He needed to breathe.

  “I haven’t been drinking,” he whispered.

  She sat down next to him. The air gradually felt lighter, as if a storm had passed.

  “Okay,” Hanna said. “I believe you.”

  He raised his head and faced her.

  Her eyes were gentle now. They sat like that for a minute, and then he leaned over and kissed her.

  At first he felt her hesitate. But then she kissed back.

  He moved away from the wall and onto all fours as she lay down. He kissed her some more, and she unsnapped the button on his pants as he straddled her legs. He helped her pull her shirt up over her head.

  She lifted her head off the floor and kissed him, hard, her lips parted. He removed her pants, gazing down at her. He slid the underwear down her thighs, over her calves. He bent down to kiss her again and she rolled him over.

  She was on top. She reached down and grabbed him between the legs. Her breath exploded in his ear. She placed him inside of her and he grabbed her around her back, pulled her close.

  The smell of salt water rode a current of air in from the open balcony, the palm trees hissed as the breeze picked up, twisting through their fronds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  He showered. She had a cup of coffee waiting for him on the counter. Beside the mug were Hanna’s notes, an itinerary for the day. William looked them over and added a few things of his own. She’d gone to get them some breakfast, so he had a moment alone to think.

  The man from First Bight had shot up the taxi. They needed pictures, at least. There was no prosecutorial unit breathing down their necks, no district attorney’s office running the show. It was doubtful any such evidence would ever be used in a court case he and Hanna were involved with. But they needed to gather everything they could, even if he wasn’t sure exactly what case they were building yet.

  Prima facie, it looked like the young woman had been c
oerced into sex with the man from the colonial-style three-bedroom rental. The man driving the Nissan Pathfinder. William had watched the girl disembark the ferry and get into the tan car, travel to the house, and wind up tied to the bed. The caveat was that she was white, and American. With tens of thousands of young women around the world, fleeing their homelands in search of a better life, there were many more likely candidates for sexual trafficking than a white American girl. And such a candidate was a higher risk to traffickers. Perhaps, though, also a higher reward.

  Maybe the man at the rental only liked white girls. Maybe he even liked the idea of an American girl. Or, maybe there was something else. She could have been there of her own volition, as Hanna suggested was possible.

  He was reluctant to believe it, but the woman had left the hospital. If she’d been a captive, an unwilling participant, logic dictated she would stay in the hospital or go to the police.

  Unless she didn’t trust the police.

  Or, unless she had been taken again against her will.

  The big question for the moment was whether to let Sterling and Cohen in on what had happened. On the one hand, it felt like progress — William had gotten close to some form of human trafficking. On the other hand, he didn’t know how it connected to Rene yet, if it did at all. And there was something about those two that William didn’t trust.

  Hanna said that Isabella had returned to the mainland. So far she seemed to only have a peripheral involvement. She certainly had skin in the game if something had happened to her, but Rene was not her blood. Rene was an unfortunate statistic.

  William glanced over the timeline he’d formed on Rene, when she’d gotten to the island, who she’d been with during those times. He had Sterling’s list as well as the names from the police file, and the lists matched.

  He was starting to think the police had formed their list based on information Sterling had provided, and no more. Fellow backpackers she’d been hanging around with, Tommy and Frederick, and then Deon.

  William took out the email and reread it.

  Dad,

  Sorry for the other night. I know you mean well, but don’t worry about school. I already have enough to graduate and can finish in the summer. I’ve met some good people down here — my friend Deon, and even a girl from the States. She doesn’t like diving though, lol. I don’t want you to send any money. I’m doing this on my own. Some of the people I’ve met are doing some work locally. I’m going to check it out. I may be down here a bit longer. I know that’s hard for you, but please understand it’s what I want. Love you, R.