They were outside again, standing by Kaddouri’s SUV. Mas and Kaddouri were still trying to absorb Johnson’s story. He was relieved that he finally told someone the truth. Whether they believed him or not was another matter.
“I stayed on the case for almost thirty years, but they eventually forced me out. They said I was too obsessed, said it was driving me nuts.”
He cracked a humorless smirk. “They thought I was seeing things.” He pinched out the contact lens that covered his left eye, to show them the damage. His pupil was neatly branded, exactly like all the Branding victims, though not as deeply.
Mas and Kaddouri stared at the mark, speechless. He squirted some eye drops on the lens balancing on the tip of his finger, and then tipped his head back and put the lens back in. He followed it up with a few more drops and blinked away the excess.
Mas’s iPhone rang, but she just stood there, staring at him. He pointed at her phone, in its holster on her belt. “Better get that. Someone might be calling.”
His deadpan quip snapped her out of it and she answered the call. “Agent Mas.”
She listened, and then quickly turned to the hood of the car, taking a notepad out of her back pocket. She flipped it open and pulled out the tiny pen inside.
Kaddouri and Johnson swapped glances. Something’s happening. They watched her.
“Thanks, Melanie,” she said, and hung up. She turned to them; they were waiting expectantly.
“That was Research,” she told them. “We got a lead on the church massacre.” She glanced at her notes. “A Father Jean Paul Eden was the parish priest. He left on a mission to Haiti a few days ago.”
“And?” Kaddouri asked her.
“And the Archdiocese says that as far as anyone knows, he was born on the bayou on Christmas morning, nineteen seventy-six.”
He swapped glances with Johnson, and they looked back to her.
“Where exactly?” Johnson asked her.
“Nobody knows for sure. He was taken in by an orphanage. All his records were lost in the storm.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
Mas shrugged. “That’s their story.”
She slipped the pen back in her notepad, closed it, and put it back in her jacket. “I’m leaving for Haiti tonight.”
“I’m going down to the morgue,” Kaddouri told her. “I’ll come down to Haiti as soon as I can.”
She turned to Johnson. “Peter, do you want to help?”
He nodded. She dug around in her bag and handed her card to him. He pocketed her card and patted it, happy to be on board for the duration.
They got in the Land Cruiser and buckled up. Kaddouri steered around the saplings in the old parking lot and negotiated the curved driveway. They all winced as the hedgerows scraped the sides of the vehicle again.
“I’ll get you access to the Bureau library,” she told Johnson. “Just dig in and trust your instincts. Call me as soon as you find something.”
He took a big breath, and nodded. He hadn’t set foot inside the Federal Building in years, and he was sure it was going to be a damned uncomfortable experience. But as long as Mas had his back, he was willing to give it a go.
Kaddouri hung a left at the bottom of the driveway and accelerated. It was going to be a long drive back into town. Maybe they’d stop for lunch at the crawfish shack they passed on the way out. He loved the cinder block shacks out here in the sticks and the food they dished up. Just a tall table to stand at and a sheet of newspaper with a pile of crawfish dropped on it. Couldn’t be beat.
Mas took her phone out. “I gotta make some calls.” She speed dialed a number. First things first, she thought.
“Mom? It’s me. Hey, change of plans. There’s a place called Riz Noir over by the airport.”
Kaddouri slouched down for a long drive in to town. There goes lunch, he grumbled to himself.