Harry and I got back to the department at eleven a.m. The sun was high and bright. White gulls keened in the air. We stood on Government Street for a few minutes to shake off our morning with Ben Belker, let the sun bake it from our clothes. After that we’d go sit our desks and wait for something to happen, hoping best, thinking worst.
I looked south. There was little pedestrian traffic, a few businessmen types, a clot of tourists with Hawaiian shirts and neck-slung cameras, typical.
A half-block away I saw a man and a woman in their early twenties walking toward the department. The man looked like an escapee from the Wild West: tall, wide-shouldered, bearded, wearing mud-encrusted denim. The woman was petite, wearing a long white dress over her slender form, the dress also smeared with dirt and mud. She had a white dressing taped to her forehead. The couple looked worn but joyful, the only people to crawl unscathed from a plane crash.
The man was carrying a bundle, held tight to his wide chest. The woman touched at the bundle like it held a magic potion.
I pulled Harry’s sleeve, pointed. We ran to the pair, our hearts wild with hope.
It was Anak and Rebecca. And their child. The couple told a fantastic tale of being sent to the small house near the Gulf, waiting for more permanent lodging. A group of attackers had arrived from the front. Rebecca ran out the back with her baby in her arms. The man remained inside to fight, wielding a rusty harpoon from the corner. The door had exploded open and a man had jumped in firing a shotgun.
Anak’s harpoon had connected.
Out back, Rebecca saw a shadowy vessel closing in on the house. She placed the baby in a boat, slipped the boat beneath the pier. When she turned and ran, a gunshot grazed her forehead and knocked her unconscious.
Tumult. Pandemonium. The smell of fire. Anak found himself with a sack over his head and a gun at his back, rushed into a watercraft, tossed beside Rebecca.
Someone yelled, “There’s no child. The others must have taken her.”
Curses of anger. The watercraft sped away.
The couple found themselves in an earthen room, probably a hurricane shelter. Food and drink were plentiful. Their captors never spoke, save for a disguised voice that said simply, “Have hope.”
This morning the couple had been gently bound and gagged, heads enshrouded, guided into a vehicle. They had traveled for at least an hour and been dropped off a block from where Harry and I saw them. Pulling flour sacks from their heads they saw a baby on the sidewalk, wrapped in a clean blanket.
It was a strange tale that went one step stranger. When the story started coming out, Harry asked, “What’s the little lady’s name?”
Rebecca pulled her child close, smoothed her hair.
“She was born at one twenty-three a.m. last December twenty-fifth,” Rebecca said. “We named her Noél.”