Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition (11 page)

“
I heard the name. Claire Auber,” Ann
said. “We were at that place where we rented the boat to take us to
the reefs, Matt. You remember?”

“
The big black woman who spoke perfect
French. I sort of remember her. She sat at a table in the back of
that little bar on the docks all the time. I said hello to her one
other time.”

“
What did she do there, do you know?”
Clint asked.

They both shrugged. They said she wore loud
clothes and talked very Jamaican when she wasn’t speaking the good
French. She spoke wadi-wadi, or patois, as they called it, and
fairly good English. Matt said he thought she sold tourist
trinkets. The higher end things. Everyone seemed to respect
her.

“
Voodoo,” Judi said. “She was a witch
woman and she sold amulets and ju-jus to people. I’ll bet Pablo was
worried about a curse that she put on him for some
reason.”

“
The bruja said someone in our party
has a follow spell on them. She can sense it,” Lila offered. “She
doesn’t know which one. It isn’t her spell.”

“
So. Was it Pablo ... no. She never met
him and he was dead when you went there. It will be one or more of
us. If we can find who we can work it to our advantage,” Clint
said.

“
You believe in those things?” Mike
asked.

“
That some of them work? Yes. That
they’re magic, not really.”

They talked awhile longer, then went to bed.
Clint would stay on watch for two hours, then Matt, then Obilio,
then Mark. Mike said he would take a shift, but Clint said he
wanted him fresh in the morning.

They got up at dawn – to find Judi and Ann
weren’t in the house. Lila came to report that they were gone. She
woke up and they weren’t there, she woke Cori and ran to the men’s
room. There was no noise to wake her during the night. She hadn’t
gone to sleep until late and had slept soundly. Cori came in,
terrified. She hadn’t heard or seen anything.

All of them spread out and looked for
anything. Maria had managed to leave the plastic bits. Clint knew
Judi could probably think of something.

Mike found what looked like blood in several
spots along what seemed to be an animal path toward the ravine. It
wasn’t a lot and was hard to see in the dawn light, but was more
obvious as the sun brightened. He felt he was being watched. It was
eerie. He acted like he didn’t see anything and came back to the
others.

They went as a group. Obilio looked carefully
at the blood and said it wasn’t human blood. He thought it was
chicken blood because it smelled a little like chicken. Lila had
killed a chicken last night and had it slow-cooking all night. They
bled it into a jar and used the blood as flavoring and for the
minerals in it in the soup when it was almost done.

“
I think Judi or Ann found a way to
leave a trail,” Clint suggested. “She managed to grab that jar on
the way out and will leave it in small dribbles along the path they
took.

“
I wonder when and how whoever managed
to get them out while we were watching!”

“
Very simple,” Obilio answered. “They
used a spell or something in the water or any of many other things
here that would make us sleep. Perhaps the monosleep. The brujas
make it. You will sleep very soundly for perhaps half an hour or
less and will not remember. She makes it because sometimes it is
hard to sleep and we take a very little. When you are asleep you do
not awaken unless there is something. After.”

“
Wouldn’t the women be asleep, too?”
Mike asked.

“
Yes. It took two very large men to
carry them. They left little to indicate they were here,” Lila
offered.

“
No. Judi wasn’t asleep – or Ann.
Someone left that trail. Someone was awake and alert enough to
think of it and act,” Clint pointed out. “I don’t understand why
she didn’t do something to wake us.”

“
You know, if Pop or one of us was
threatened, they wouldn’t do anything that might get us killed,”
Mike said. “Maybe point a gun at one or all of us and warn that
anything would make them shoot.”

“
I agree,” Matt said. “Why weren’t they
asleep? The rest of us were.”

“
Those two were already in the bedroom.
We all had a glass of that corn drink before we went to bed. I
think we can test it somehow and it will have the stuff in it,”
Mark said. “Maybe Judi wasn’t supposed to be awake and it changed
their plans a bit.”

“
Judi will find subtle ways to slow
them down. We have to follow them fast!” Clint ordered. “They’re
being clever. They might stay close because they don’t think we can
follow.

“
Mike, you said you felt you were being
watched by the path? Do you feel it now? At all?”

Mike nodded. “I sort of little nagging
feeling.”

“
Then you go toward the finca where
Luis keeps the horses with Luis. The watching spell the bruja
mentioned is probably on you. They’ll depend on it to tell them
where all of us are. We can use it to our own advantage. Mark will
stay here at the house, out of sight. They may come or send someone
to find something here. Judi will know I’ll expect that and will be
able to make them think something is here. That will separate one
of them, if there are more than one. It could make it a bit hairy
for Judi and Ann if there’s only one ... no. They’ll either be
forced to come along or locked in a house or something.

“
If someone comes, stay out of sight
and note where they go. Follow them if you can stay where they
won’t know. They’ll lead us to the women if we haven’t found them
before. If we find them one of us will come back here before we do
anything if we have the time.

“
Cori will go with Mike and Luis. They
can see that nothing happens to her ... and that she can’t be held
in danger to keep us away. (She started to protest. That made her
understand that Clint wanted no way for her to be held hostage.)
We’ll all be packing. We might end up having to shoot our way out
of something. If it comes to that, you shoot. This isn’t a game or
a TV show.

“
Questions?”

They all agreed. Mike, Cori and Luis headed
down the mountain, Mark, Obilio and Matt went with Clint to a
nearby place where the path couldn’t be seen from anywhere else and
waited until they were a distance away before Mark went back to the
house from behind.

Clint was a hell of a lot more worried about
Judi and Ann than he was about to let on.

Kidnapped!

Clint and Matt let Obilio do most of the
tracking. The chicken blood trail ended after less than a kilometer
when they found the jar under some bushes by the trail. There were
spots about every 200 meters along the way. There was still a lot
of the blood in the jar. That worried Clint. Was she caught or did
she ditch the jar to keep from being caught?

They were going in the general direction of
where they followed before. Obilio stopped them after awhile and
said he was pretty sure he knew where they were hiding. They could
get to the place by either path. It was about three kilometers
along. Those two paths were the only way in or out. They would come
close to the other path, but across the river, about half a
kilometer ahead. The river was shallow and easy to cross there, but
the crosser would be very visible. He felt one of them should go to
the other path in case one of them saw them coming on this one.
They would probably try to take the other path out in that case.
Clint thought for a minute, then told Obilio and Matt to follow
this path and he would cross the river a little farther back and
would get to the other path. Give him fifteen minutes, then go
ahead as they were going.

He went back to a spot where there were rocks
all along in the river just behind a bend that would hide him from
the lower ford. He was able to cross without a lot of trouble, then
went on through the brambles and shrubs to find the path. He moved
along it for about two and a half kilometers and was starting to go
through a little patch of tall grass when he heard a voice asking
what the hell they thought they were doing. They would never get
away with this crap!

It was Judi, acting scared and indignant. If
there was one thing Clint knew about her, it was that she was NOT
scared.

A voice hissed for her to shut up or he would
shut her up.

Clint checked his Glock and started to move
ahead slowly when a second male voice said something in French with
a strong accent. He stepped back and waited. A short time later two
men came in view with Ann and Judi between them. They were very
carefully scanning ahead and were moving slowly when they came out
of the grass and to the easier and more visible path. They speeded
up. One had a gun. He would be Quentin or whatever. The other was a
big black with dredlocks. He had a machete in his hand and a pistol
stuck in his belt. Clint waited until they passed and stepped out
on the path when they were about twenty feet ahead. He quietly said
that if either of them moved one step or acted in a manner that he
would think maybe, just perhaps, they were going for a weapon he
would see that it was the last thing they ever did.

Quentin spun and snapped a shot very close to
Clint. That gave Judi an opportunity to step close and do a kick
while moving toward him. He fell over backward, but held onto the
pistol. The other one started to grab for the pistol in his belt.
Clint dove forward and snapped a shot at him, then rolled and
snapped one at Quentin. He yelled for Judi and Ann to head down
that path the way they had come as fast as the could go. A bunch of
people were coming from that direction.

They bolted. Judi kicked the big black in the
head as she passed, which made him swear when he dropped the
pistol. Quentin jumped up and was trying to draw a bead on Clint,
who shot a bit wildly over his head, but he dodged the shot from
Quentin and had to turn to get another shot. Clint was about to
shoot him when the black grabbed him around the ankle – which saved
his life. He went down as Quentin put a shot right where his head
was a split second before.

Clint brought the butt of his pistol down on
the black’s head and rolled to the side as Quentin fired again,
nicking him slightly in the left arm. He kept rolling and went over
the side of the path and sprung to his feet to dodge through the
brush. Quentin fired at the sounds of his rush, but wasn’t very
close. Judi and Ann would be beyond where they could go back after
them and they didn’t know how many or who were coming toward them
from that direction. Clint heard them running along the path away
from the direction they came from. By the time he reached the path
again they were gone.

There was some blood (besides his), so he had
hit one of them. He wasn’t about to go after them. They could hide
and ambush him where he wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving.

About ten minutes later Obilio came running
along the path. He saw Clint and stopped, then was concerned
because of the blood. Clint’s. Clint shook his head and said it
wasn’t serious. He thought a minute. Obilio was quiet.

“
Maria wasn’t with them!” Clint
exclaimed. “I’ll be alright. It’s just a small flesh
wound.

“
Are the women alright?”

“
Only Judi and Ann are here, but they
heard enough to know that Maria is being sent out of the country
somehow and a man called Aurelio,” Obilio replied. “I think she is
still close. They had no time to take her anywhere and would have
been seen.”

“
Let’s check where they were. Maybe
there’s something there that’ll tell us something.”

They went back to a cave that was close to
the intersection of the two paths. There were some clothes and food
and three bedrolls.

“
They held Maria here,” Obilio said.
“The bedroll is still here so she hasn’t been taken far. She is
probably close and they did not want Judi or Ann to
know.”

“
They didn’t count on me,” Judi said.
“We were all supposed to be asleep with a potion they kept talking
about that we would all have gotten. They said it never failed
before. They couldn’t understand it.

“
I told them I know a little voodoo
myself so it would automatically not work on me and Ann was right
there beside me so I protected her by being close.

“
I don’t know why Ann and I didn’t get
it. Everyone else there did, apparently. They do think maybe I have
a little power. They believe in that power. Antoin is scared
shitless of it.”

“
We figured it was in the chicha we had
before we went to bed,” Matt replied. “You two were in the kitchen
fixing the chicken.

“
Whose idea was the blood and why did
you toss the jar?”

“
It was Judi’s idea. They were forcing
us out, saying you were all helpless and they would shoot you one
at the time if we gave them any trouble. Judi turned in the doorway
and said something about turning off the stove. She went in and the
jar was right there beside the stove. It didn’t register that it’s
a wood stove and isn’t turned off,” Ann said. “Antoin saw a couple
of drops of the blood when he went back to check the trail behind
and was telling Denis about it. I said none of us were bleeding. He
was crazy! I got in their face and Judi threw the jar in the bushes
when they were looking at me. They searched us and didn’t find
anything or anywhere we had cut ourselves to leave a trail so they
decided it was some wounded animal’s blood, but they watched our
every step from then on.”