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“Yeah.” They slid into the car, and as they backed out, both of them saw the old man waving goodbye to them from his upstairs window. John said, “That was a little spooky, what she did.”
“Witchy,” Randall said as they drove away from the apartments.
~*~
Hunter asked Ariel, “Do you have a place we can drop you? We have to go to a meeting.”
“I don’t know of any place.”
“Would you wait in the lobby of my hotel until we come back?”
“Yes.”
Hunter drove to the hotel and let her out, saying, “I’ll be back.” Ariel nodded, then entered the hotel lobby, found a comfortable seat and a discarded paperback by Colleen Hoover and began to read.
Hunter and Andre drove to Sector Headquarters and joined Bob Redus in the conference room, where four DOJ attorneys sat on one side of the long table. One of them said, “We have some preliminary questions for all of you, then we will need to speak to Agent Kincaid alone.”
“Alone?” Hunter asked.
“You were the only one who saw the ship come into the New River and then run aground. Agents Redus and Benton arrived while people departed the ship.”
Redus and Benton left the room a half-hour later, and the attorney said to Hunter, “Your testimony will be key, since you saw Jean Claude Villard on the ship. Would you go through events for us again?”
“Sure,” Hunter said, and she told them what happened. The four attorneys took notes and recorded her, but didn’t ask many questions. When she finished, the lead attorney said, “Excellent. We’ll call you when things begin.”
Hunter met Andre in the hall. He said, “You ready to get out of here?”
“I’ll meet you at my hotel.” They took their personal cars and once there, found Ariel in the lobby. Hunter led them to her room, where Ariel told them of the vodou ritual she witnessed, and of the chase afterwards.
Everyone was silent with their own thoughts, then Hunter said, “You didn’t see them kill the woman.”
“No. They stopped when I knocked people down while getting out the door. Then the two bokors, the two sorcerers, came outside to watch me leave.” She shivered at the memory.
Andre said, “I’m not sure what they did to the goat is illegal, either, because it was a religious rite. I’ll have to do some digging. Otherwise we have zilch to have law enforcement arrest them. We sure can’t because none of it is an immigration crime.”
Hunter said, “We can go check some things tomorrow.”
Andre nodded, then walked to the door, “Later, dude.”
After he left, Hunter said, “You can stay here tonight with me. I’ve got these two beds, so one is yours. Tomorrow I’ll help you check out your home, make sure you’re safe there.”
Ariel said, “Thank you.”
They talked about other things after that, and watched television until midnight. Both slept well.
Ringo Bazin sat in his Mercedes across the parking lot from Hunter’s car and watched the man in the hoodie near Agent Kincaid’s car trot away into the deeper shadows under the trees. Ringo saw the lights in Kincaid’s room go off. He made a call on his phone while starting the Mercedes. When a voice answered, he said in Creole, “Li se fè,” he smiled, “It is done.” Ringo slid the phone in his pocket, turned the steering wheel and drove out of the hotel parking lot.
At three different locations, other men turned off their phones and left at the same time.
Hunter and Ariel were up early and walked to the car as every leaf and branch dripped water in the morning’s sticky tropical humidity. Clicking the button on her key to unlock the car, Hunter reached for the handle.
Ariel stopped her, “Wait.” She pointed at a white powder on the handle, “This is nowhere else on your car. Don’t touch it.”
Hunter said, “You think that’s poison?”
“Maybe, I’m not sure.” She rubbed her forehead and said, “This is bad magic.”
Hunter still wasn’t a believer, but she knew there were potions and ingredients in the world that could do people harm. “If I wash it off, will that take care of it?”
