I was concentrating so hard on getting her attention that I didn’t even notice who had walked up on the other side of me.
“It’s happening again, Miss Sullivan,” Collazo said.
Even with all the noise in that place, hearing his voice startled me. I jumped back and collided with him.
“Geez, Collazo, give me a heart attack, why don’t you.”
“I go to a scene, and somehow you are involved.” He had removed his jacket, and when I bumped into him, his freshly ironed shirt felt damp. He mopped the back of his neck with a handkerchief.
I pointed to the covered body and said, “I didn’t have anything to do with this.” But even as I said it, I knew I was protesting more to convince myself than the detective. She was dead because she had talked to me.
“Madame Renard, the store owner,” he said while flipping through the pages of his note pad. “She just identified you as a customer who was here this afternoon. You talked to the victim and bought a dress.”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. I’d been accusing myself the entire drive here.
I could not stop staring at the tarp. “She just wanted to go to school, Collazo.”
He pulled at the neck of his shirt, and the movement drew my eyes away. He ran a hand around the back of his neck where the tufts of black body hair curled over the top of his collar. The air-conditioning in the building was practically nonexistent, and the humidity was off the chart. “You came here to the Swap Shop to see her, and you were one of the last to see her alive.”
I nodded. “Someone set up the meeting. I wanted information about anyone who had been on that boat that sank up in Hillsboro, and this girl”—I pointed to the draped body— “her name was Margot. She had come over on the Miss Agnes, but several months ago.” I looked around at the crowds and the lights. “Collazo, are you telling me that this girl was murdered here in this crowded place, and no one saw anything?”
He nodded. “Either saw nothing or will say nothing.”
“What about the store owner. What does she say happened?”
He shrugged. “The girl was there. The owner went into the back room, came out, the girl was gone.”
“What about that snitch, that guy, Gil Lynch. I saw him in the crowd while I was talking to the girl.”
“Interesting.”
“And I came with Joe D’Angelo. After I talked to the girl here, Joe took off to have lunch with some buddy of his.”
“Miss Sullivan, start over. Tell me how you got here, what you talked about.” He had his gold pen out, and he flipped to a new page in that little notebook of his. I found it reassuring somehow: As long as Collazo made those little notes in his neat writing, he might help me make sense of this.
After telling him the whole story, I added, “The Haitian term for them is restaveks, but they are really child slaves. It’s not unusual for them to be molested by family members— they are seen as the property of the family. Apparently this restavek business has been going on for decades in Haiti, but Joslin Malheur, the captain of the Miss Agnes, and all his crew, they’ve imported the concept here to the U.S. They are in the business of bringing girls here and selling them into slavery. Margot said Malheur is a former Tonton Macoute. He likes to hurt people. Gets off on it.” As I was telling him the story, it began to sound more and more far-fetched. “I think he’s responsible for all these DART killings. Including this one.
“Miss Sullivan, you are telling me that these killings are about child slavery, here in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Yes, Collazo, that is exactly what I’m saying. Okay, so the restaveks aren’t the only part of their cargo—they do make money from bringing in your standard, old-style, illegal immigrants, too. In fact, this girl, Margot,” I said, “told me that her brother paid eight hundred bucks to come here to the States in order to take her away from these people.”
“These people. You mean the slavers.”
The tone of his voice told me what he thought about my theory.
“You’re telling me,” he continued, “that the police translator who is here somewhere right now taking witness statements is really a child slaver.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true, Collazo.”
“And this young Haitian girl was telling you all about this when most Haitians won’t say anything to an American.”
“The only reason she was helping me out was because she wanted to bring this Malheur guy down. He killed her brother. She said he was going back to the Bahamas on the Bimini Express—a little freighter that usually sails out of Port Laudania. Please, check that out, even if you don’t believe me.”
He didn’t say a word for almost a minute.
“Come,” Collazo said. He walked over to the body, now abandoned and covered and waiting for transport. I followed him, thinking he wanted to speak to me out of earshot of the crowd. He bent down and, with a flourish, pulled back the sheet. It was the last thing I expected him to do, and I didn’t have time to avert my eyes.
“What the ...” I turned aside and felt the bile rising in the back of my throat. A porous blackness began to creep in around the periphery of my vision. I put my hands on my knees and dropped my head, breathing deeply. I had seen her, and already I wished I could erase those few seconds from my memory. The left side of her head looked like someone had cut a deep groove from the top of her scalp all the way down to her eye, and dark blood mixed with grayish brains spilled out across the concrete and across her face. Her eyes and mouth were open, as though she were still screaming.
“They have determined that he does it with a very sharp machete. He must be an immensely strong man. The MO’s the same as the other four victims.”
“You could have just told me, Collazo. My God. I think I might be sick.” I was having trouble breathing, and my eyes filled with tears. “You bastard. I was just talking to her a couple of hours ago.”
“And that’s exactly why I showed her to you. Child slavery.” He cleared his throat and stepped in close, invading my space, making me feel sicker still. “I’m going to tell you a little secret about people.” He paused for effect, then said, “They lie.” He stopped and smiled, showing the wide gap between his front teeth. “All the time. People lie to us to try to get us to do things. Things they want us to do for them. Go home to your little tugboat, Miss Sullivan. Amateurs like you, you go out and try to play detective, and people wind up hurt or . . .” He gestured at the body. “I don’t want to be scraping your brains off the pavement next time.”
XXII
I thought about Collazo’s words all the way home, thought about what I’d seen beneath that tarp. How could someone do that to another human being? Even that scowl of hers, the anger she’d wrapped herself in, none of that had obscured the fact that she was a beautiful child. Could Margot have been lying to me? I didn’t think so. The hate for Malheur I had seen on that girl’s face was real. She had taken a risk by talking to me. And I had put her in terrible danger by talking to her. If only I hadn’t gone to speak to her, if only I had taken her with me, put her in the same house with Solange. If only the world weren’t a place where children were abused and killed. And then there was Juliette. I had seen it in her eyes, too. Someone was hurting her. On the one hand, I was terrified that my blundering around would result in someone else getting hurt or killed. Yet, on the other hand, no one else was doing anything to stop this restavek business. Whether or not Collazo and D’Ugard believed me, this was real.