Touched by Death (11 page)

"It's a Haitian version of a cappuccino."

Jade inhaled again. "Really? Where did you find
it?"

"Ahhh." Dane grinned. "I told you I
would show you the hidden gems of this area."

"Hidden is right." She took a tiny sip and
sighed happily. "Thank you. It's lovely."

Dane held out the second cup to Meg. "Are you
also a coffee fanatic?"

She accepted the cup gracefully. "I enjoy it,
but I'm not crazy like she is. And I only eat a quarter of what she
does."

"I'm not that bad." Jade smiled at Dane.
"Don't let her scare you."

Dane walked back to his truck. "It would take
more than a hungry female to scare me off."

Stephen and Wilson came around the corner of the rocks,
dust covering their weary faces. They waved cheerfully. When Stephen spied
Emile, his smile became more formal. He walked over and held out
his hand.

"Hi, I'm Stephen."

Emile reached out and shook his hand. "Emile."

"Hey, you're Dane's brother-in-law, right?"

Emile frowned and glanced over at Dane.

Grinning, Dane answered. "He means you are related
to my brother's family. The answer is yes, Emile is Tasha's brother."

"Ah." But Emile didn't smile with understanding.

Stephen stepped back as Wilson walked over with a bottle
of water in his hand.

Dane watched as each person spoke. Emile, like his
sister Tasha, was quiet – reticent with strangers. Still he handled
himself well in this context. He didn't exactly smile; he did, however,
gradually lose his stiffness.

Dane turned his attention to Stephen. "Is Bruce
around?"

Stephen shook his head. "Bruce has gone to the
authorities to update them on the progress here and to let them know
about the clinic opening in town."

"Clinic?" Emile was struggling with his
English, so Stephen explained. A strange look stretched across Emile's
face that had Dane wondering…but Emile was a simple soul so he let
it go.

Though apparently, he wasn't as simple as Emile's
father, Peppe, whose mental health had deteriorated rapidly over the
last few years. There wasn't the necessary level of care available here
for someone like him and according to John, Tasha wouldn't let him go
to a home anyway. Emile was supposed to take care of him now, however,
according to John that wasn't happening.

Dane hated it, but it wasn't his place to interfere.
He'd made his opinion of the situation clear. To no avail. He'd rather
eat a bullet than sit in his own shit though.

Another reason to go home soon. It wasn't in his nature
to let an injustice like that go on and on.

Neither had it been in John's nature years ago. What
had the ensuing years done to him?

Sitting in the truck on the way back, Emile cast a
wary glance at Dane, his boss. Questions burned in his mind. Only he
didn't want to cross that invisible line between boss and employee.
"Now those are good looking women."

Dane tossed him a grin. "They are, aren't they?"

"Smart to help out. I would too." Emile
twisted on the seat to stare out the back window. The women were gone
from view. He turned around as the truck approached his home.

"Nothing stopping you. You live right around
the corner from the site. Although I guess they aren't always there.
And you work elsewhere." Dane nodded and turned a sharp corner.

"Exactly. You're the boss. You can come during
working hours. Emile has to come after work, when women are long gone."
He grinned. "Maybe Emile needs to stay home sick."

Dane laughed. "Well at least I'd know where to
find you to haul your ass back to the job." He shifted gears and
made a right turn to John's house. "Those women are hard to ignore."

"Me, I like brunette. Tall dark brunettes."
Emile grinned.

"Me, I like blondes. Short tiny blondes."

Emile laughed, a hoarse roughness to his voice. "Then
again, I like all women."

As he pulled the truck to a stop in front of the main
house, Dane smirked. "What's not to like?"

Emile hopped out and headed inside for dinner. He
knew what there was
not
to like.

Women who didn't know their place.

U
nlocking the lab door, Jade accidentally swung her
laptop bag against the side table as she entered and jarred the microscope.
"Shit."

She'd woken late, barely made it for breakfast and
still hadn't gotten on track for the morning. She'd also been shortchanged
on her coffee and that was bad news. For everyone.

The air inside was stifling so she opened the door
wide. Sighing, she dumped her bags down on the floor and walked over
to turn on the lights.

She frowned and looked around the lab.
What was different?

Meg had been last to leave and closed the room yesterday.
It didn't feel like the same lab at the moment.
How odd was that?
The tools weren't arranged as she'd have
laid them out. Neither did her chair sit where it normally sat.

Was it because she hadn't been the last one here yesterday?

Must be. The door had been locked. She walked over
to check the door mechanism. It didn't appear to have been touched or
tampered with in any way. The windows had been left open though. Normally
they closed and locked them when they left. The equipment inside was
expensive and could be hocked for some serious money if someone knew
where to sell it.

They'd been tight with security on the first couple
of days then, when problems hadn't developed, they'd grown lax.

That needed to change.

A proverbial list maker herself, she booted up her
laptop then opened a new document to create a checklist for opening
and closing the lab at the end of the day. She couldn't print it off
here. That would have to wait until she returned to the hotel.

Dr. Mike showed an hour later, coffee in his hand.
But only one. "You dare bring java in here and not bring enough
for everyone!" She shook her head in disgust.

Solemnly he held the cup out to her. "Actually,
it's for you."

Shamefacedly, she accepted the treat. "See, that's
what happens when I'm deprived in the morning. I turn into a real bitch.
I am sorry."

"Nah. Figured you'd run late this morning. Besides,
I'm here to go over our 'prisoner lady.' Can you point her out for me?
I'll have Wilson give me hand bringing her over. Also," he said
looking around, "is there a space in here for me to work?"

"I'm just finishing this boy and I need to enter
the information into the computer, so this table will be clear in a
couple of minutes."

"Perfect." He nodded. "I'll grab the
others to give us a hand when you're done."

Jade quickly cleaned off the table and brought out
the 'prisoner lady's' chart. They really should have some kind of name
for the poor women. She pondered that for a second, remembering the
plants flourishing around the gravesite. She smiled and gave 'prisoner
woman' the moniker of Rose and wrote it on the chart.

Stephen and Wilson entered carrying Rose.

Grabbing her laptop, Jade headed to the far end of
the trailer and tried to focus on her own work. It was hard to ignore
what Dr. Mike was doing though. Not that there could be much to say
about the condition of a body after an earthquake.

An hour went by.

Finally, she couldn't wait any longer. She wandered
over to his end on the pretext of grabbing her forgotten water bottle.
In the silence, every move she made sounded extra loud. She waited impatiently,
hoping he'd notice her presence. No such luck. She had to ask, "So
did you find anything?"

"Hmmmm."

She stared at his bent head, then leaned in for a
closer look at what he was studying.

"What's that?"

"Good question. The chains weren't put on after
her death as someone suggested. In fact, I'm going to say she'd been
wearing them for a while."

Jade's stomach dropped. Uh, oh. She waited impatiently
until she couldn't stay silent any longer. "Anything else?"

"Lots. But not necessarily conclusive. See here,"
he pointed to the neck area. "Her neck was broken."

"Which could have happened during the earthquake."

Dr. Mike bent for a closer look. "True enough
but the hyoid bone has been crushed and that's usually caused by strangulation."

Jade swallowed. Hard. "What about other injuries?"

"I'm working on it."

"Right."

Stephen blasted through the front door, wide eyed
and gasping for breath, his emotions ravaged by...something. Jade shook
her head as she raced to his side. "Stephen, talk to me."

He took a deep breath as Dr. Mike joined her.

Stephen struggled to breathe normally. "You need
to see this."

Dr. Mike raised his brows. "All right. Let's
go."

They exited the small trailer and headed toward the
path.

"Hey, where are you all going?" Wilson called
out from the reefer truck. He slammed the door closed, turning to face
them.

Pointing to the gravesite, Jade said, "Stephen
found something he wants us to look at."

"I'm coming too." Wilson jumped down the
stairs then raced to catch up.

The gravesite looked the same as always when they
approached. In fact, she'd half-expected there would be natives lodging
a protest over their arrival or something, given Stephen's reaction.

"It's over here. I wasn't sure when I first started.
Now there can't be any doubt."

Frowning, they gathered around the spot in question.
A path had been dug through the pile almost to the other side. Enough
to be sure that there were no other bodies in the heap of rock. After
opening the grave in the middle, the plan had been to dig out the lower
part of the pile on the left until they'd found everything to be found,
then move to the right side.

Remains lay exposed.

"What am I looking at?" Jade asked in confusion.

"Exactly the question I was hoping you'd answer
for me," Stephen demanded, explaining further. "I found more
skeletons. But cleaner, older, deeper in the ground than the others
we've found to date. These appear to have been covered by a thick layer
of dirt and rocks. As if they were in a layer below the mass grave."

Dr. Mike shrugged his shoulders. "Some of the
dirt would have slid down on top of the first bodies when they were
dumping the bodies. This was done in a hurry by people without the skills
to do it right. Hell they might have done that deliberately if there
was a break between loads of bodies. That would actually be practical.
They'd have to keep the predators out somehow."

"True," Stephen pointed out smoothly. "But
why would these victims dumped in here be so clean, and buried with
chains?"

Chains?

The color bleached from Dr. Mike's face. He could
barely get the words out. "More? Are you saying you've found more
people with chains on them? This doesn't make sense."

"It does if you don't look at this simply as
a pile of earthquake victims. Sorry, but what we have here is no longer
simple."

Jade bent down to take a closer look. Stephen had
opened a six-foot square. The remains and dirt had long married together
into a brown, sandy mess. Only the white of bones showed.

Coiling away from several of the bones were rusty-linked
rings ending in thick manacles.

Jade stared as Dr. Mike pointed out at least two sets
of links crumpled in and over top of each other. "We'll need to
treat this site carefully."

Dr. Mike nodded. "Still, chains are not definitive
proof. Again, we can't let our imaginations run away from us here. There
are possibilities other than foul play." He sighed heavily. "However
I'm really struggling to find a good one."

"I think this should wait until Bruce returns.
We'll need to treat this as a potential crime scene – just in case."
Jade cringed inside. She wished there was another way.

"And how about an expert on Haitian culture?
Surely there's someone we can ask about this."

Stephen snorted. "Be serious, Jade. What can
we
ask? This
isn't exactly the type of question that you ask to start a conversation.
So…" He mimicked a heavy Texan drawl as if he were asking the
authorities. "Do you keep your whole family in chains – or just
the women?"

"Actually…" Jade winced at the images
that refused to stop prodding the back of her mind. "I had worse
thoughts going through my head." She took a deep breath. "I
was thinking of the sex market. What if someone kidnapped young women
for the slave trade in Asia or Malaysia?"

All the men stopped and stared at her.

"Now that's not a nice concept." Wilson
ran one hand through his dust-covered hair and stared at her. "Why
would you even think of something so nasty?"

"Because it's a huge problem. We all want to
bury our heads but just because we can't see it doesn't mean it isn't
happening all around us. After a disaster like what happened in Haiti,
children were being snatched off the streets and as always young women
are the prime victims."

"And this is as good a place as any, to stop."
Dr. Mike stepped in as the voice of reason. "There's no way to
know exactly what we have here until we remove everything and analyze
it."

"Just in case, we need to photograph this site
and all the stages of our work here, until we have these bodies out
and safely inside." Jade looked Dr. Mike in the face. "Speaking
of safe, has anyone considered security on the site while we're working
here?"

Stephen said, "Bruce requested more money be
budgeted for security. I don't know what the end result is. Why?"

Looking around, Jade shrugged self-consciously. "I
don't know if there is foul play involved here or not, but if people
hear about what we've found..."

Dr. Mike clambered over several rocks. "You think
that the person responsible might find out? That's highly unlikely,
isn't it? Not everyone knows what we're doing."