I shook my head.
“What is it with you, Seychelle? Don’t you ever learn? It’s not like they’re going to send you to jail for it, but why do you always have to start by pissing off the authorities?” She shook her head.
“She’s only half of the story, Jeannie. Come on.” I led her around the wheelhouse and pointed down at the fishing boat tied alongside.
“That’s what I found her in.”
“Okay, it’s a boat.”
“Look again, Jeannie.” In the stern, a foot was visible protruding from the tarp.
“Geez, Seychelle, what the...”
“That’s exactly what I said, Jeannie.”
“I take it that person’s in a lot worse shape than the girl?”
“You could say that. It’s a woman—was a woman. The girl says she’s no relation. I wanted you here before the cops came.”
“I guess I can understand that. So I’m here. Let’s make that call. Now.”
“Okay, okay.” I crossed the aft deck, then turned back to face her. “You understand this, don’t you, Jeannie? I mean the kid, she’s Haitian, and you know what they do with illegal Haitians.”
“I know. I know this is just you being you. This time, though, you’re up against the U.S. government—the INS. You probably don’t have a hope in hell of keeping that little girl here. Especially if we continue to delay calling the authorities.”
“But she says her father’s American.”
“You talked to her? She speaks English?”
“Yeah, she speaks a little English—maybe even more than a little. It’s hard to tell. She barely has the strength to say two words. I just don’t want her to get thrown into a foster family, even for a day or two, and then shipped back to Haiti.”
“Seychelle, I’m not an immigration attorney.”
“I know that. I just need you to get me some time, that’s all. Maybe I can find her father.” I climbed up onto the dock, carefully avoiding the dozens of white splotches of pelican poop.
“That’s pretty iffy. For all you know the guy won’t even want to claim her.”
I straightened, brushed off my hands, and paused for a minute, trying to find the right words to express the feeling I’d had ever since looking into those big brown eyes through the binoculars. “Jeannie, there’s something about finding a kid like that.” I thought about how frail and helpless she had felt when I’d lifted her in my arms and carried her to the bunk, and once again I felt the tightness in my chest. “I just can’t turn her over and walk away. I’ve got to try.” I headed up the dock.
Leaning against the side of the bait shop, the pay phone receiver to my ear, I began the second run-through of my story for the 911 dispatcher when I noticed the Coast Guard launch. The hard-bottom inflatable with a center console was piloted by what looked like two well-fed Iowa farm boys in blue coveralls. With their identical builds, Florida tans, and military-style haircuts, they looked like older versions of Jeannie’s twins, only one was blond, the other brunette. It was the blond who motioned for his buddy to back the boat closer to the wooden fishing boat. Though their launch was only eighteen feet long at best, the blond waved his right hand in the air, making concise hand signals to back up a little more, speed it up, slow down, stop, as if he thought he was docking a 747 in her berth at the airport.
When the blond reached down and pulled back the tarp, first he lost his Florida tan as the blood drained from his face, and then his barracks breakfast went when he heaved into the Intracoastal off the inflatable boat’s stern.
IV
Over the course of the next couple of hours, Gorda turned into a rendezvous point for nearly every law enforcement agency in South Florida. Abaco paced the decks and barked at the men and women who came aboard, but soon even she was exhausted, and she retreated to the shade of the cabin. The paramedics were the first on the land side, and I was glad to lead them to Solange. Their uniforms, equipment, and squawking radios scared her, but they had to stick an IV needle in her whether she liked it or not. Solange didn’t cry, but the fear in her eyes was naked and raw, and I wished there was something I could do to make it all seem less terrifying. I tried to imagine the world she had known in Haiti. Though I had never been there, I was pretty certain that her former life did not include men in uniforms crowding her, asking her questions, poking her, feeling her limbs.
Several Fort Lauderdale Police Department cars arrived and were followed by a Crime Scene Unit and then the coroner’s van. The FLPD Marine Patrol Unit tied their launch alongside the Coast Guard inflatable after a young woman who worked the dock complained that all the boats were eating up her fuel dock space.
Soon there were two sites being worked: the child in Gorda’s wheelhouse and the wood fishing boat with the dead woman. A turf war was under way as the Coasties and the sheriffs and the local Fort Lauderdale PD all tried to take control of the scene. Shouting men and women on the aft deck of the tug and on the fuel dock tried to move the wooden boat from where it was tied on the outside of Gorda over to the dock so they could begin to collect the evidence and deal with the body. Thus far they were more concerned with all of that than with questioning me, so I sat and held Solange’s thin hand as the medics worked on her. Each time something new and strange was thrust at her, those deep brown eyes turned to me with a yearning for reassurance.
Those eyes did something to me. They fired up some deep inner mechanism I didn’t know I possessed. I wanted more than anything to wrap my arms around her and protect her from harm. I wanted to tell her it was all going to be okay, as my dad used to tell me when things got bad for my mom. He would hold me and tell me that everything would turn out fine if we’d just give her time, only that turned out not to be true at all. I couldn’t be sure that things were going to turn out fine for Solange, either.
The Border Patrol pulled up in a big white Chevy Suburban with green lettering on the side just as the paramedics were pushing Solange on a gurney toward the back of their van. Jeannie told the officers they would have to follow the unit over to Broward General if they wanted to question Solange. I wanted to jump into the back with Solange, but I gave her hand one last squeeze and tried to smile.
A uniformed officer ordered me not to leave the scene until I had spoken to the detective in charge. Jeannie assured me she would follow the ambulance to the hospital and see that Solange got the care she needed, both medically and legally. I thanked her, waved them off, and walked back onto the dock, girding myself to face the grilling I knew was coming.
“Miss Sullivan, over here.”
There, standing next to the bait tank, was the last person I wanted to see. Somehow, though, I’d known all along it would be my luck that he would pick up this case.
“Detective Victor Collazo.” I bobbed my head in a curt hello. He hadn’t changed much in the months since I’d seen him last. Even in this heat, he was wearing black pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was supposed to hide the thick black body hair that tufted out of his collar and around his wrists. His neck was shaved close all the way around. It looked like a firebreak in the black forest. I imagined his barber had to replace his blade after each Collazo visit. In response to the heat, he’d removed his suit coat, and the sweat rings under his arms already reached nearly to his waist.
“You look well, Miss Sullivan,” he said.
Typical, I thought. Telling me, not asking. Collazo had a thing about questions. He never asked any.
He carried what looked like the exact same notebook, and I wanted to ask him if there were still notes in there from the first time we’d met, last March, when he’d suspected me of murdering my former boyfriend.