by Lincoln Matt
“She says that they went to a party near the campus, in an apartment building,” Díaz said, and the other officer started scribbling notes down on a pad of paper. “They can’t recall which one, someone else took them there. An acquaintance, she doesn’t know his name.”
“Good, that’s good,” I said, smiling at the kids to show I meant them no harm. “Anything else? Anything at all? Even just how the drug made them feel.”
Díaz and the girl had another exchange in Spanish, and then the seated boy added something else.
“He says that he felt nothing, as though he was watching his body from the outside,” Díaz said. “And she says something similar. She says she felt like she was dead but still alive. And they still kind of feel that way, on and off.”
“So they definitely took the drug,” Holm said.
“Sounds like they took something,” Díaz said, and then spoke to the kids in Spanish again.
The girl responded again.
“She says that their acquaintance told them it would be fun,” Díaz translated. “Like something out of a movie. I don’t quite understand that part.”
“A movie?” I repeated, raising my eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
Díaz and the girl had yet another exchange, but he shook his head in frustration.
“I’m still not really getting what she means,” he said. “Her words are slurring, and it doesn’t really make any sense. She just keeps saying they said it would be like a movie, but it wasn’t, and it was awful.”
“What movie?” Holm asked, bewildered.
Díaz spoke to the girl again, but she just shook her head and then collapsed down on the table with a sob. The officer patted her on the shoulder gently and shrugged.
“I think that’s all we’re getting from her for now,” he said apologetically.
“No, that’s good, you did good, Díaz,” I assured him. “Now, what about him?” I nodded discreetly in the direction of the other boy who was still backed against the wall where we had left him.
“I can try,” Díaz said and started talking to him.
The kid didn’t respond at first, making a point to look away from us.
“Try asking him about his girlfriend,” I suggested. “Just make him remember something about her that’s not this, then he might be ready to talk some more about the bad stuff.”
Díaz turned back to the kid. This seemed to work better, and he said a few words back.
“Her name is María,” Díaz said, “and they were students at the college. First year.” The other officer scribbled away on her notepad.
“Go see if we can find anyone by her name and general description at the college,” I instructed, and the officer looked more than happy to escape the room.
Díaz and the boy exchanged a few more words, though the kid still refused to look at him, staring instead right at the concrete wall.
“They’ve been together for a few months, since the summer,” Díaz said. “They met at an orientation for the school. She’s from Santo Domingo originally, and he’s from a smaller town to the north.”
“See if you can figure anything out about this guy who took them to the party, just do it in a roundabout way,” I instructed. “Ask if they went to a lot of parties, then lead into it or something like that.”
Díaz spoke to him in Spanish some more, and they had a much longer back and forth this time. The kid even looked at him now.
“This was the second party they’d been to,” Díaz said. “They weren’t much into that scene, but this kid wanted to test it out, his first time in the big city. I think he feels guilty for suggesting they go in the first place.”
“Okay, tell him it’s not his fault,” I said. “That he couldn’t have predicted this. Reassure him.”
Another exchange happened, and then the kid started crying and banging his head against the wall. I reached out and grabbed him, holding his arms down to his sides again so he wouldn’t hurt himself.
“What did you say?” I asked Díaz.
“Just what you told me to say,” the flustered young officer replied. “He didn’t like being told it wasn’t his fault.”
The kid continued to thrash and try to get away from me, but it was all in vain. I didn’t have to do much to keep him at bay.
Just then, Dr. Sánchez came back in holding a clipboard.
“Can you sedate him?” I asked her.
She rushed back out of the room and returned with a syringe. I held him down while she sedated him, and two nurses took him away.
“When he wakes up, try again,” I told Díaz. “And report back to us with the results.”
“I’ll do my best,” the young officer promised.
“You’re doing good, kid, this is a weird case,” Holm said, flashing him a grin.
“Did you get the results back from the blood tests?” I asked Dr. Sánchez. She nodded.
“Yes, but nothing showed up,” she said. “Just like with the other girl. We found some cocaine, alcohol, other drugs, though they ingested less than she did. But nothing else. Maybe they didn’t take the new drug.”
“They said they did,” Díaz said. “Or at least they said they took something unusual, and the victim did, too.”
“That is very strange then,” Dr. Sánchez said, scrutinizing the test results on the clipboard. “We’ve sent our results and the blood samples to your people in Florida. Perhaps they’ll have better luck finding something.”
“An untraceable drug,” Holm mused. “It’s the perfect crime. We can’t find it in their supply, and we can’t find it in their blood. So how are we supposed to stop them from distributing it?”
“There’s no such thing as an untraceable drug,” I said. “They’re just hiding it well, which means we have to figure out a different way to look for it. We’ll see what Bonnie and Clyde have to say when they get their eyes on it.”
“Is it possible that it wasn’t just the drug, but the combination of drugs in her system that did this to her?” Holm asked. “You said that she’d ingested more of the other stuff.”
“That’s true, but the tests we ran on her were also much earlier, so their systems may have just gotten rid of more of it,” Dr. Sánchez said.
“They’re still tripping, though,” Holm remarked. “Look at ‘em.”
“Not tripping so much as still coming down from whatever it was they were on,” Sánchez clarified. “I was with them earlier, when they first came in, and it was much worse.”
“What were they acting like?” I asked.
“They had very little presence of mind,” she said. “Now they are more cognizant, though not always. And whatever they took seems to have altered their general state of mind. Pair that with the trauma of what they’ve seen, and here we are.”
“How did they come to you?” I asked. “Did one of them call for help?”
“I believe it was the boyfriend,” Díaz said. “I heard the call earlier, he was saying that she was having some kind of seizure, but he was clearly high himself at the time.”
“Okay, so we’ve established there’s a lot going on here,” I said. “I think it’s best that Holm and I head out to the border and investigate further, but stay in contact with us, okay? We want to be kept up to date on everything that’s going on back here.”
As we turned to leave, the remaining boy said something else in Spanish. He stared up at us, his eyes wide and his pupils dilated in a way that made me question whether he was really looking at us at all.
“What? What did he say?” Holm asked.
“He said something about a mask,” Díaz said, shaking his head. “I don’t quite understand.”
Díaz tried to speak to the kid some more, but he only repeated the same phrase in Spanish.
“He keeps saying something about a scary mask,” the young officer said. “I don’t know, sorry.”
Then, the kid slumped down on the table next to the girl.
“Perhaps we should take them to ro
oms, as well,” Dr. Sánchez said. “No doubt they’re at least dehydrated.”
“Try to talk to all of them later,” I reminded Díaz. “You’ll stay on the case?”
“Sure,” he said. “If you think I can help.”
“You’ve been a great help,” I assured him. “Just keep us up to date.”
And with that, Holm and I slipped back out into the hall, leaving the officers and Dr. Sánchez to deal with the kids.
“That mask thing,” Holm said, pulling me aside quietly. “Do you think it could be related to the thing at the airport?”
“We can’t rule anything out,” I said. “It would seem like an unlikely coincidence.”
“So weird,” Holm said, shaking his head. “This might be our weirdest case yet.”
“Yeah, and that’s saying something,” I chuckled.
CHAPTER 7
Alejandra
Alejandra forced herself to stay cooped up in the hotel until Ethan and his partner from MBLIS arrived like she’d promised him and her father that she would. But she thought she might explode from boredom if she had to put up with it for another minute.
The border patrol officers had insisted that she keep the murder quiet, so she hadn’t been able to discuss it with anyone else at the conference. This just meant that she was stuck attending more and more meetings about the situation with the cartel, where everyone agreed that there was a problem, but no one could agree on how to deal with it.
Honestly, by the end of the day, she thought that she might actually prefer the murder scene to the conference.
Finally, late in the evening, she couldn’t handle being cooped up in her room anymore and headed down to the lobby to grab a snack from the vending machine. Just as some pretzels were making their way down to her, a car pulled up outside of the hotel lobby, and two men climbed out. She recognized them immediately as Agent Ethan Marston and his partner, Robbie Holm. She rushed out to meet them.
“You made it!” she called out to them as she waved. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
She gave him an awkward hug and Holm a handshake as a greeting.
“Alejandra, it’s good to see you again,” Ethan said, and her stomach did a backflip at the sound of his voice. It was so much better in person, and she felt that unmistakable heat rush to her cheeks again. It was a good thing that it was getting dark out.
“Let me help you with that,” she grabbed one of his bags and led him, Holm, and the Dominican guards who accompanied them into the hotel lobby.
“I trust you’ve kept out of trouble since we spoke on the phone,” Ethan said, and she caught the corner of a smile on his lips. His eyes twinkled at her.
“Yes, I’ve stayed cooped up here,” she said. “With all of these diplomats.” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the conference room behind the lobby, but they were all in bed by now.
“Is there somewhere we can get a bite to eat in this place?” Holm asked. “It’s been a while.”
“Oh yes, there’s a restaurant downstairs in the basement,” Alejandra said. “Let’s just get you checked in first.”
She led them up to the front desk, and they had an exchange with the night clerk who gave them their room keys.
“Third floor,” Ethan said as she walked with them to the elevators.
“Good, we’re right by each other, then,” she said, and then felt her cheeks flush again. “I just mean, it will be easier to communicate that way.”
“I agree,” Ethan said, smiling at her again. Holm laughed to himself and shook his head as he watched them interact.
She let them go up to their rooms on their own and get settled and then led them down to the small restaurant that was still open after hours. It was mostly a bar at that point in the evening, but they still had a few things available on the menu.
“Bring us whatever’s easiest,” Ethan told the waiter as they sat down at the table furthest from the bar.
There were only a few tables in the small place, but they were spread out. The lighting was dim with a slight green hue to it, and the tables, chairs, and barstools were all made of wood. They were the only ones in the restaurant but for a cook, one waiter, and an older couple sitting in the corner who looked to be on vacation.
“So, any more dead guys turn up?” Holm joked once the waiter had walked off with their orders.
“No, not yet,” Alejandra laughed, “but give it time. You spoke to my father?”
“Yeah, and we saw some… interesting stuff at the hospital,” Ethan added.
“Ah, did you see one of the victims?” Alejandra asked, a pit forming in her stomach at the memory of the first time she’d seen one of the overdose victims. It had been a high school student, barely sixteen. That was when she decided to get more involved with fighting back against this cartel.
“Yes,” Ethan said. “It wasn’t pretty.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Holm said, taking a sip of water and looking a little green.
If this could spook the MBLIS agents, Alejandra knew that they had a real problem on their hands.
“It’s been happening for weeks,” Alejandra said. “And undetectable in the blood. It’s all very strange.”
“What can you tell us about all of it?” Ethan asked. “Your father and his associates seemed at odds with one another about how to deal with the problem.”
Alejandra couldn’t help but laugh. “They can’t agree on anything. Neither can the people at this conference. Everyone wants everyone else to shoulder the responsibility of dealing with the cartel without doing anything about it themselves. Which obviously gets us nowhere.”
“So the conference hasn’t been going well,” Ethan said.
“Let’s just say that I was so bored and frustrated that I willingly walked into a murder scene,” Alejandra said.
“That bad, huh?” Ethan chuckled, and Alejandra’s stomach did another little flip at the sound of his laugh. She buried her face in her water glass so her cheeks wouldn’t flare up again.
“Oh yes,” she said. “They’ve just been yelling over each other for days, insisting that every town except theirs should be dealing with this. I don’t know. It’s just been a mess. One guy even suggested that we should go to war with Haiti, the imbecile.”
“War?” Ethan asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s a bit extreme.”
“Hardly,” Alejandra said. “The hatred for the Haitians is real, especially here, and especially now. Many Dominicans see them as the source of all our problems when, in reality, it’s much more complicated.”
“How so?” Holm asked.
“Well, the tensions on the island go back generations,” Alejandra explained. “For whatever reason, the Dominican economy and infrastructure have always been well ahead of Haiti’s. So we’ve always looked down at them as a culture in some ways, not that I think that’s right. Add to that the very different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, and the increased economic disparity that came after the earthquake, and I’m honestly surprised it’s taken this long for things to boil over.”
“There was more immigration from Haiti to the Dominican Republic after the earthquake, right?” Ethan asked. “I did a bit of reading up on it on the plane.”
“There was a huge stream of immigration after the earthquake,” Alejandra confirmed. “Before that, things were stabilizing a bit. And since then, it’s just gotten worse. There was goodwill at the beginning since the country was so devastated and many of them had no choice but to come over here for shelter and medical care. But over time, people started to want them to go back to Haiti, even if they’d built lives here.”
“That sounds like a difficult situation,” Ethan said.
“It was,” Alejandra agreed. “It even got to the point where the Dominican government started paying people to go back a few years ago. It worked for some, but not all. And now, with this cartel business, things are just getting worse than ever.”
“Interesting,” Ethan said. “And most of
the violence is associated around the border?”
“For now,” Alejandra said. “But that doesn’t mean the rest of the country, including Santo Domingo, isn’t in an uproar about it. It’s pretty much all anyone talks about in the news or on political shows anymore. And as you saw today, the cartel has definitely made successful efforts to extend its operations into the rest of the country. It’s only a matter of time before things escalate, and the violence reaches everywhere else. The anti-Haitian commentators would like us to think that it already has.”
“And they’d like to extend to Puerto Rico if the story the chief of police told us about the airport incident is true,” Holm said.
“Ah, yes, that’s what really set everything off,” Alejandra sighed. “And those masks. It’s really played into old stereotypes and divisions between our two nations and cultures. Voodoo masks. I can’t imagine that true voodoo practitioners are happy about any of this.”
“What do you know about any of this voodoo stuff?” Holm asked. “Is the cartel involved with any of that?”
“I don’t see how,” Alejandra said, surprised at the question. “You have to understand. Voodoo is a religious practice in Haiti. It has nothing to do with organized crime, normally. And sure, there are some shops for tourists, and there’s overlap between some voodoo practitioners and drug users, but that can be said for any group. Everything in Haiti isn’t about voodoo.”
“So why were they wearing the masks, then?” Ethan asked. “And then what that kid said about a mask…”
“Kid? What kid?” Alejandra asked, leaning forward, intrigued.
Just then, the waiter appeared with several trays of food, mostly appetizers. Ethan waited until the waiter was safely back behind the bar to respond.
“In the hospital, we talked to three of the girls’ friends, the one who overdosed on whatever this thing is,” he explained. “And one of them mentioned a mask when describing the dealer, or what he experienced while under the influence. It was hard to grasp what he was saying since he was speaking in Spanish. Even the guy translating seemed confused.”
“Interesting,” Alejandra said, reaching for some pretzels the waitress had brought them. “It could be a coincidence, or kids scaring each other at parties. It’s not uncommon for that to happen in the Dominican Republic, since the fear of voodoo and the Haitians runs deep.”