FBI agents Nadege Francine and Christine Mas were bouncing along in Francine’s embassy Jeep, negotiating a rutted path in the foothills below the Citadel as they searched for the priest.
They were exhausted from a long day of driving. It was late in the afternoon, and the fruit and water they snacked on at the village market was no substitute for a hot meal and a bath. The merchants told them that Eden set up a relief station in the foothills, and that he and the other priests were feeding some refugees who had made their way north over the last several days. Port-au-Prince wasn’t the only disaster area; virtually the entire country was, and many people were on the road.
At first the merchants were sympathetic, but now they were nearly out of food and generosity. Thankfully the handsome priest had come down from the Citadel and told them to send all the hungry people up to him. They were camping up there now, somewhere in a meadow.
The drive north from Port-au-Prince had been nerve-wracking. Traveling the Haitian countryside was always an adventure, and to make matters worse there was a general exodus underway from almost every city, town and village. The entire population was rattled and desperate from the quake, and many of them had good reason to distrust anything built by the hand of man. Outdoor living seemed to be the only safe option. Most people stayed close to home, or what was left of it, but a good number of them headed out of town and just kept going. Most of those headed north, away from the epicenter, clogging the roads and camping wherever they could. Even in the best of times, Haitian law and order was a hit-or-miss proposition, but now they were almost nowhere to be found. Mas and Francine had to draw their weapons more than once.
Chatting with Mas on the long drive north brought back memories of Francine’s police training with Mark Kaddouri years before at the NOPD academy. On their rare days off after graduation, Francine and her boyfriend would go off with Mark and some of the other rookies in their muscle cars, tearing through the back roads of the bayou cruising for crawfish shacks.
The Branding Killer stories sickened her, but it didn’t surprise her that the trail led to Haiti. From the way Mas explained things, voodoo was likely involved, and it was no shock to Francine that the killer was after a priest. If you’re going to kill a priest, Francine thought, Haiti was a good place to do it. It was a good place to kill anyone.
More than a thousand earthquake refugees were camped in a mountain meadow, rimmed by lush stands of trees made nearly impassable by tropical foliage. They were desperate souls, with no transportation and little more than what they carried on their backs, or could stuff into carts and wagons. Campfires were being tended to, and several of the men were back in the trees digging a latrine.
On a rise that overlooked the squalor, Eden and his fellow clergy had set up a long row of tables. Several large gutted ocean fish were laid out side by side, and were free for the taking. Most of them had already been picked clean, but there was still some meat on the bones. Dozens more fish were in tin washtubs under the table.
The catch had been brought up from Cap-Haitien, courtesy of a Cuban trawler that made port in the minutes after the quake. The crew heard the news on their shortwave radio, and assumed that Cap-Haitien might be in the same desperate straits as Port-au-Prince. When they tied up and learned that wasn’t the case, they contacted the authorities at the Flota Cubana de Pesca back in Havana anyway, and the FCP donated the entire catch on the spot.
Pans of bread were arranged in a separate row behind the fish. Father Ortiz had finally figured out how to get the oven started, and he had been baking up a storm with the Haitian nuns ever since, working in shifts through the long winter nights. The kitchen was the only warm room in the Citadel orphanage, so there were plenty of volunteers among the nuns to knead dough around the clock.
Most of the refugees were sitting around their fires, enjoying a full belly of bread and fish, the cool mountain air and the lush meadow greenery. Their children found a relatively flat patch of ground and were playing soccer. The game was a welcome diversion from their collective misery, and many of the adults were seated on a grassy hillock to watch the match and digest their lunch.
A hundred or so refugees were gathered at the tables for another helping, and as they got what they wanted, Father Eden handed each of them a half-liter plastic bottle of W.I.L. Several pallets of the American mineral water had been shipped to the Citadel by the Vatican, to tide them over until they could secure a reliable supply of potable water. Eden was spending his free time in the evenings Googling around for the best plans on how to build a rainwater catchment system and a solar still. The winter rains were coming soon, and he wanted to take advantage of them. But for now, they were grateful to be drinking bottled water. He had already handed out seven pallet’s worth, or perhaps it was eight. He’d lost count working in the brilliant sunshine over the last few days. They had more up at the Citadel, but he couldn’t remember exactly how much.
Bishop Lomani was working alongside Eden, standing with him behind the last table in the food line and handing out bottles of water. Lomani glanced down the line of tables at the scraps of food still laid out, and then cast an eye at the refugees dotting the meadow. He slowly shook his head, wondering how in the world they managed to do what they were doing. A nun beside him caught his eye, and her expression said much the same thing.
“It’s a miracle that we fed all these people,” he quietly said to her.
“Truly!” was her whispered reply.
Eden was standing on the other side of the bishop, but he was distracted by something and hadn’t caught their remarks. Thalia Rose and some of the women from the village were working with the other nuns, standing behind the long row of tables dispensing remnants of food. As he leaned over his table to hand out a bottle of water, he sneaked a glance at her and discovered that she had been watching him. They exchanged secret smiles and got back to what they were doing.
Agent Francine saw the whole thing, and smiled knowingly. Priests are men, she reminded herself, a bit of wisdom her mother had given her on her first day of Catholic high school back in Baton Rouge.
She was leaning on the front fender of her mud-splashed Jeep, watching Mas approach the priest. While Francine was watching his private interaction with the beautiful young Haitian woman, she noticed that a Haitian man in the crowd loitering by the food tables was doing the same thing. Perhaps he was jealous, but in any case he didn’t seem like he was there for the food. And now he was watching Mas approaching the priest at the water table.
“Father Eden?”
Eden turned to Mas and smiled. He recognized her at once as an American by her accent and by the way she was dressed. She was bathed in sweat and coated with sticky dust. He handed her a bottle of W.I.L.
“Water is life,” he said, reciting the pearl of wisdom the bottling company adapted for their product’s name.
Small world, she thought with a smile. It was her favorite brand. “Thank you, Father. Could we have a moment?”
“Certainly.”
She motioned for him to walk with her, and they stepped away from the tables. As they moved away to be by themselves, Mas noticed the Haitian man out of the corner of her eye. He was standing in the crowd milling at the tables, but he wasn’t eating and he didn’t have a paper plate in his hand. Instead, he was watching Eden walking away with her. Mas was a stranger in a strange land, she reminded herself, and she didn’t want to jump to any rash conclusions. Perhaps he was with someone picking up some food, waiting to help carry it back to their group. But there was something about the way he was loitering in the crowd. His body language told her that he was disconnected from the others around him, that he was alone in a hungry crowd but that he wasn’t hungry himself. The priest seemed to be the only thing on his mind.
He was in his fifties, a tall, muscular man, of Haitian extraction from what she could tell. He could be a local, or he could be down here from America, tracking the priest and trying to blend in with the crowd. All she really knew at this point was that the priest was being hunted by a serial killer who was probably in his fifties, and that was good enough for her.
She didn’t let on that she saw him, but she was sure that Agent Francine saw him, too. Whether the man knew it or not, he had just shot to the top of their persons of interest list. But first things first.
She stood with Eden in the late afternoon shadow cast by the Citadel, looming far above them atop Mount Bonnet a L’Eveque. Although her throat was dry, she didn’t crack open the bottle of mineral water to resolve her discomfort. Her mind was on something else, and her smile faded as she extended her hand.
“Agent Christine Mas, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m down here from the New Orleans field office.”
His eyes registered surprise, and as he shook her hand, his affable expression began to cloud with puzzlement. “You’re a long way from home, Agent Mas. How can I help you?”
“Have you had any contact with anyone back in New Orleans since you arrived?”
“No, the refugees have kept us all so busy. Why?”
She took a breath, and plunged ahead. There was only one way to tell him. Just spit it out and clean up the mess afterward. “The Church of the Rebirth. There was a massacre. The Branding Killer was there.”
Eden stared at her, completely stunned. He felt his entire body go numb. Several of the nuns and refugees were watching them, and so was Thalia Rose and the ladies from the village. Even though they couldn’t hear, they could all see that something was wrong. The American woman had just told him something sad. Very sad.
“I’m so sorry,” Mas said, and touched Eden’s shoulder. The gesture of compassion brought tears to his eyes, and his face flushed with grief.
Behind Mas, the people fell silent watching them, and the Haitian man took a particular interest in the change of mood. Francine kept her eye on everyone who was watching, especially the man in the crowd.
“Oh, my Lord!” Eden managed to gasp. “Those poor women...”
His chin quivered as he stared unfocused at the ground. His tears rolled off his cheeks and made little dark spots on his dusty boots.
“We think he was looking for you,” Mas explained quietly.
“Because of my birthday?”
She was surprised by that, and then she realized she probably shouldn’t be. She nodded.
“I read the papers,” he told her, catching the look in her eyes. “His victims were born on the same day I was.”
She nodded. “I’ve come to save you,” she told him.
He shook his head. “You came here to catch him.”
She nodded again. “If I can, yes. But my first priority is to bring you home.”
He looked away to the misty green mountain and the Citadel that crowned it. The Bishop’s Miter. A light fog was drifting in from the north coast. There would likely be a cold rain that evening.
“I have no home now,” he whispered. “They were my only family.” He turned back to her. His tears had stopped.
“If this monster is looking for me, then let me be the bait in your trap.”
Mas realized that this was no grandiose gesture born of grief. The man was completely serious, and entirely aware of the gravity of his statement.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that...” she stammered, unprepared for his resolve.
“But I can,” he told her bluntly. “I will not have my good sisters die in vain. These killings have to stop. So I will stay here and I will do my work, and if the killer’s already here, then he will find me.”
He waved his hand, taking in everything – the tables of food, the refugees and the Citadel, his orphanage in the clouds. “This is for them now. Especially now.”
His face was red from weeping, but his quiet determination was entirely genuine. Despite herself, Mas realized that she was staring at him in awe.