When Death Comes for You Page 4

  “I cooked and I baked,” Rose said. “I find it is better to nourish the soul with food than with politics.”

  “You have no political affiliations?”

  “I am a chef not a politician.”

  “Then why did you leave Haiti? Why were you on that boat?”

  Something flickered in Rose’s eyes before she quickly shaded them with the long dark sweep of her lashes. “It is what Papa Bondye wanted,” she said.

  The woman was hiding something. Renée could see that much—but what, exactly? “How do you know what God wants?”

  “He tells me.”

  “He speaks to you?”

  “He speaks to all of us. We have only to listen.”

  Renée frowned. She had spent the better part of her childhood surrounded by people who claimed to speak directly to God. In her experience, they did not make the most well-adjusted human beings. Was this woman lucid enough to withstand an INS interrogation?

  “Ms. Fleurie—”

  “Rose,” the older woman insisted.

  “Rose,” Renée dutifully repeated, “we have to prove that you have what’s called ‘a well-founded fear of persecution.’ At your hearing, the INS will ask all sorts of questions about what you did, who you did it with, and what will happen to you if you’re returned to Haiti. Can you handle those questions?”

  “If I am returned to Haiti, the military will necklace me,” Rose said without a hint of fear. “They will push a tire around my neck and pour gasoline over my head. Then they will light a match and watch me dance myself to death.”

  It was the utter lack of emotion in her client’s voice that gave Renée pause. The first time she had seen a news report on the horrible “necklacing” practice, she’d barely made it to the bathroom in time to lose her lunch. Rose seemed almost nonchalant about the whole thing.

  “Aren’t you afraid to die?” Renée asked.

  “There are worse things than death.”

  “Like what?”

  Without a word, the older woman rose from her seat and carried Renée’s empty plate to the sink. She carefully washed the dish, dried it, and placed it on the counter. A moment later, she returned, wiping her hands on a pink tea towel.

  “Your friend is here,” she said.

  Renée glanced out the window but saw only an endless expanse of ocean. As if on cue, a horn tooted outside, the sound drifting into the kitchen from the front of the house. How had Rose known John was outside? The kitchen windows faced the back of the house, toward the ocean, so she couldn’t have seen him drive up. And the house’s cinder block construction not only kept the interior blessedly cool, but it also muffled sound. If Rose hadn’t seen John nor heard him drive up, how had she known he was there?

  She gazed at her client with an open question in her eyes, but Rose merely gave her an enigmatic smile.

  “You must go,” she said.

  Renée opened her manila folder and drew out eighteen Polaroids, laying each of them on the kitchen table.

  “What happened that night, Rose?”

  Rose’s smile vanished. She stared at the pictures for a moment, then picked up the one of Eléne Guillaume.

  “I could not save her,” she murmured, running a gentle finger over the little girl’s likeness.

  “Did you try?” Renée asked.

  Rose said nothing.

  “Please, Rose, you can trust me. What happened?”

  The older woman looked up, her eyes twin pools of regret. “I could not save her because it was not the job I was sent to do.”

  “What were you sent to do?” Renée asked cautiously.

  “To find you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Papa Bondye sent me for you and your daughter.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Maternal Juju

  Renée unlocked the door to her hotel room and raced inside. She made a beeline for the telephone, dropping her briefcase on the ground as she went. Her fingers shook as she pressed the numbers.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line spoke in a deep baritone.

  “Rose Fleurie is mentally ill,” Renée blurted.

  There was a long pause. “How do you know?” Fabrice Jean, her boss at the Haitian Resource Council, finally asked.

  “I’ve met with her. She has some kind of grandiose delusional disorder. She might even be schizophrenic.”

  “Did the INS conduct a psychological examination? They don’t usually do that.” Fabrice was the quintessential lawyer—careful, rational, and objective. She suddenly regretted calling him before pulling herself together. He did not do well with raw emotion, and she was too shaken to be logical.

  “There was no examination,” she admitted, “but I’m familiar with mental illness.”

  “Familiar?” Fabrice sounded cautious.

  “My fath—” She cleared her throat. “I’ve had a lot of experience with the mentally ill. Trust me, I know how to spot delusion.”

  “I see.”

  It was clear that he did not. She could picture him, seated in his cluttered little office in Dorchester, tapping his fingers on his desk and wondering if he had made a mistake in hiring her.

  “Fabrice, she said God sent her for me. I don’t think we should take this case.”

  He sighed. “You’re an excellent lawyer. I would not have sent you to Guantanamo if I didn’t believe you could handle the job.”

  “I can handle it just fine, but I’m telling you, this woman is mentally ill. We shouldn’t spend HRC’s limited resources on her.”

  “She is our only hope. If we win her case, we might be able to persuade INS or the courts to grant others legal counsel.”

  Renée had heard the argument before—had supported it, in fact. But that was before she met Rose Fleurie. “The INS thinks she killed the other passengers on that boat.”

  Fabrice inhaled sharply. “What’s their evidence?”

  She told him about the autopsy report, but he surprised her with a line of questioning she hadn’t considered.

  “Autopsy? Why would the INS conduct an autopsy?” Fabrice asked. “There have been numerous reports of Haitians drowning under these exact conditions. Why spend taxpayer dollars on what must have seemed like an open-and-shut case?”

  “I don’t know,” she had to admit.

  “I don’t know either, but you have to find out.”

  “It’s not like I have an investigator at my disposal.” She was embarrassed by the whining note in her voice, but it didn’t stop her from wanting to run as far as she could from this case.

  “You are on a US naval base,” Fabrice countered. “Find out the protocol in a case like this. Also, find out if there are other plausible explanations why the victims showed no signs of drowning.”

  “I—”

  “I will have our paralegal review the case law and fax over anything that’s helpful,” Fabrice interrupted, making clear the conversation was over as far as he was concerned.

  Damn it. The only argument she had left was one her boss probably wouldn’t understand—she didn’t understand it herself. “Fabrice, this woman knows things about me she shouldn’t.”

  His heavy sigh filled the air. “Like what?”

  “She knows about my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  “Exactly,” she said, pouncing on his question. “I don’t talk about my daughter to anyone, so how could Rose Fleurie know about her?”

  Fabrice was silent for a moment. “Maybe it was a lucky guess? A mother’s intuition?”

  She rolled her eyes. Even the most rational men became simpering fools when it came to motherhood. “Rose doesn’t have children, so we didn’t exchange any maternal juju.”

  “I have no good explanation.” To his credit, he sounded embarrassed. “All I know is that we have one chance to save thousands of lives. Let’s not waste it because this woman discovered you have a child.”

  He hung up before she could respond. Renée slamm
ed down her own phone and left the room.

  She needed a drink.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lady Death

  The Pearl Jam was the hotel’s tacky hole-in-the-wall bar—full of tiki torches, grass skirts, and pink flamingos. But what the place lacked in atmosphere, it made up for in ice-cold beer. Renée sank into a corner booth and ordered a Bud Light, ignoring the fact that the clock hanging on the wall hadn’t yet struck noon. When the server appeared with her drink, Renée took a healthy swig and finally allowed herself a deep, steadying breath.

  Rose Fleurie unnerved her.

  It was hard to admit. Renée had practically grown up in a psychiatric hospital; she knew how to handle those with a less-than-firm grip on reality. But Rose was beyond her experience. After sharing her startling pronouncement, Rose had begun singing. Even now, Renée could hear the odd, haunting lyrics, though she had no idea what they meant:

  Noye mape noye

  Noye mape noye

  Erzulie si’w wè mouin

  Tombe nan dlo

  Pranm non

  Sove lavi an mouin

  Noye mape noye

  Rose kept singing until Renée grabbed her briefcase and almost ran out of the bungalow. She scrambled into John’s jeep as if the hounds of hell were after her.

  How had Rose known about her daughter? She didn’t talk about Marie-Thérèse to anyone, not to colleagues, not to friends, not even—

  “Ms. François, I hope you’re finding our little bar to your liking?” Adam Hartmann stood before her, smiling the way a feral dog might. “A Harvard grad like you must be used to running in better circles.”

  “I need another session with Ms. Fleurie,” she blurted, then cleared her throat of the rising panic. “I mean . . . we didn’t have enough time to prepare her case.”

  Adam’s smile barely flickered. “Of course. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  “That’s it?” The legal arguments on the tip of her tongue died an unexpected death. Why was he suddenly so accommodating?

  “I wouldn’t want you to claim we’re mistreating your client. It’s my ass on the line, remember?”

  She stared at him for a moment but could not read those hooded eyes. “Thanks,” she muttered.

  “Let me introduce you to my girlfriend.” He gestured toward the door, and a moment later a beautiful woman stood at his side.

  She looked to be in her late twenties, around Renée’s age, but that’s where the similarities ended. Adam’s girlfriend was tall, maybe five-foot-ten or five-foot-eleven, with a voluptuously curved body. Her skin was the color of golden amber, and a wild mane of dark brown curls cascaded down her back. She . . . glowed. There was no other word to describe the way her presence made everyone else fade into the background.

  Adam put a possessive hand on the woman’s arm. “Honey, this is Ms. Fleurie’s lawyer, Renée François.” He turned to Renée with a look of unrestrained pride. “This is my girlfriend, Gigi Bienaimé.”

  Renée offered her hand, but Gigi leaned down and pressed a kiss to both her cheeks.

  “My name is Gislène,” she said with a playful tug on Adam’s arm. “But some people cannot pronounce it, so I have become Gigi.”

  “I happen to love the name Gigi,” Adam protested, giving her an adoring smile.

  Renée tried not to gag.

  “Are you done with check-in?” Adam asked his girlfriend.

  Gigi dangled a room key from her dainty fingers. “Let’s hope it is free of banana rats.” With a delicate shiver, she explained to Renée, “My last hotel was infested.”

  “Let me see you to your room,” Adam said. “I’ve got a little time before I have to head back to work.”

  But Gigi shook her head. “I want to have a beer with Renée, if she’ll allow it.”

  “Of course.” Renée took malicious pleasure in the look of disappointment that flashed in Adam’s eyes. He had obviously expected something else.

  “I thought—” he began.

  “I know how busy you are, chéri. I will see you tonight,” Gigi interjected, leaving Adam with no choice but to make his reluctant departure.

  “Do you want something to eat?” she asked Renée, motioning to their server with a languid hand. “I’m famished.”

  “They don’t serve lunch here.”

  Gigi winked at her. “They will for me.”

  Sure enough, their server—a young, handsome Filipino in his early twenties—nearly fell over himself to accommodate Gigi. When he departed on his mission to hunt down a grilled cheese sandwich, Gigi casually reached for Renée’s beer and took a swig.

  “How do you like Guantanamo?” she asked.

  Renée shrugged. “I haven’t seen enough to make an impression.”

  “We’ll have to change that. I will take you to the fence line, so you can see how the big, strong marines protect us from those Cubans.” She batted her lashes and gave Renée a sardonic grin.

  “I don’t think my military escort will approve a field trip,” Renée said dryly.

  “We don’t need him. All we need is this.” Gigi fumbled inside her shirt, revealing a brief glimpse of breasts so pert, they would have made the Filipino server stand at attention. She pulled out a plastic badge and flashed it at Renée.

  “You’re with the UN?”

  Gigi nodded. “I’m an interpreter with the High Commissioner for Refugees. We report to the UN General Assembly. When I make a request, the military is usually happy to oblige.”

  She had known a UNHCR mission was in town—her boss had told her that much. But the Haitian Resource Council didn’t have the clout to arrange a meeting with the UN delegation. Now, as luck would have it, she was in the same hotel as a member of the team. It explained why Adam Hartmann had suddenly become so accommodating. He didn’t want her tattling to his girlfriend.

  “What’s UNHCR’s role here?” she asked.

  “We’re documenting the US government’s compliance with the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention,” Gigi said.

  “The government claims most of these people are not refugees,” Renée pointed out.

  Gigi shrugged. “The Americans invited us because they don’t want the world to think they’re ignoring the Convention.”

  “You provide legal cover.” Renée tried unsuccessfully to hide the disappointment in her voice.

  “I’m just the interpreter,” Gigi countered.

  The server appeared with Gigi’s sandwich, and the two struck up a flirtatious exchange in Tagalog. Only after he left did the other woman allow herself to dig into her meal.

  “You speak Tagalog,” Renée said.

  Gigi nodded as she tore into her grilled cheese. “Also Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin—in addition to English and French. Haitian Kreyòl came with my mother’s milk.”

  “You’re Haitian?” Renée asked, genuinely surprised. “I assumed you were French.”

  “Franco-Haitian,” Gigi corrected. “I was born in Haiti, then adopted by a French family and raised all over the world.”

  “The child of diplomats,” Renée guessed. Her husband was the child of diplomats. He had the same worldly, privileged—and slightly entitled—air that Gigi exuded. Renée, on the other hand, hadn’t gotten her first passport until law school.

  “My father was a diplomat,” Gigi agreed. “My mother was a beautiful appendage on his arm.”

  The woman clearly had mommy issues, but who didn’t? “Why did you become an interpreter?”

  Gigi shrugged. “I didn’t want to be some rich man’s plaything, so I decided to use my skills to make a difference in the world.”

  Beauty, brains, and heart? It would have been easy to hate Gigi, but Renée found herself intrigued.

  “You grew up in the States,” Gigi said, her words more statement than question.

  Renée nodded. “Brooklyn.”

  “Why did you get involved in this case?”

  “I was watching Haiti fall apart right there on my television screen
.” Renée shuddered at the memories. “The murders, the ‘necklacing’ in the streets—it was terrible. But when the refugees took to the sea, risking their own lives, I couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”

  “So you quit your fancy job at Robeson & Young and joined a nonprofit.” It was also not a question.

  “How do you know all that?” Renée demanded. Everyone on Guantanamo seemed to know the details of her personal life.

  Gigi glanced up from her sandwich. “Adam told me. He’s got a file on you.”

  “A file?” She was too stunned to say more.

  “Adam’s a bit . . . insecure. When he learned he was going up against a Harvard-educated lawyer, he became obsessed with knowing who you are.”

  “What does my personal life have to do with anything?”

  “Like most lawyers, Adam will exploit any advantage. He plays to win.”

  Renée started to say something, then paused as the wheels turned in her head. Somehow, Rose must have seen Adam Hartmann’s file. That would explain how she had learned of Renée’s daughter. It was hard to imagine how one of the “boat people” could have gotten access to Adam’s file, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

  “Why would you date a guy like that?” She didn’t care if the other woman was offended, but to her surprise, Gigi only laughed.

  “I’m sure Adam can be a jerk as a lawyer,” she said, “but he’s a good guy.”

  Renée found that hard to believe. “He called the refugees boat people.”

  “I didn’t say he was politically correct,” Gigi snorted.

  “Politically correct?” She turned the words on her tongue like a bitter pill.

  Gigi dropped the remainder of her sandwich and wiped her hands. “Look, Adam grew up on a farm in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He didn’t see a city of more than thirty thousand people until he was twenty-five. He’s not the most sophisticated person you’ll ever meet.”

  “And that excuses him?”

  “No, but it does explain him,” Gigi said. “Adam and I met in New York a few months ago—at a task force meeting on the refugee crisis. We spoke on the issue for hours. Do I find his views maddening? Absolutely. But he’s one of the rare guys who’s genuinely interested in me as a person; to him, I’m not just a pretty face. Frankly, that’s worth a lot.”